These mornings of freezing temperatures and nights of single digit wind chills remind me of those aching days in the milk barn when I was growing up. Although there was an old electric heater in the tank-and-wash room, the milking parlor was unheated. Uninsulated. And unfun.

Even though we didn’t know the kind of cold that growled through Iowa and Wisconsin, and snarled and hissed across the Dakotas, we knew what cold felt like. Not the sub-forties, and not just barely below freezing. The kind of cold that froze ice eight inches thick on the pond and turned the little creeks into miles of meandering ice paths. The kind of cold that made ice on our eyebrows and froze our breath onto the outside of the old towels we wrapped around our faces. The kind that makes hands and feet ache after a half-hour of milking—and you still have an hour left.

On the most severe days, we’d take a short break next to the old heater whose coils glowed red against the ceramic stacks. Take off one boot and hold it above the heater. Maybe even try to stand on one foot and hold the other sock-clad foot just above the heater. Sometimes our toes were so numb we couldn’t feel the heat until it began to burn through those old cotton socks. Wish we’d known how much better wool worked! Even a double layer of those old, worn, white athletic socks we wore wasn’t enough to keep the cold away for very long. And even though our green, rubber boots had “Insulated” embossed on the heel, that was nothing more than a thin layer of sprayed-on felt. The boots never felt insulated on those days.

So… those are the things I think about these days while scooping up frozen horse manure in the dry lot and dumping the rock-hard clumps into the wheelbarrow.

This is the kind of weather that lets you know how good your gloves and boots really are. Forty-five minutes of farm chores with the wind chill near the zero mark will tell you the truth about your winter gear. Just like X-rays and brain scans, sleepless nights and sick kids, tough times and lean years: those all tell you what kind of faith you really have.

Even if you don’t have the kind of faith that lets you walk on water or move mountains, you can have the kind that helps you fill the sandbags and trudge through the darkest valleys. The kind that keeps getting you out of bed every morning. Doing each day the things that must be done, the things that feed families and nourish the sick, clear the roads and deliver the loads, replenish the shelves and repair the lines. The things that help a hundred or a thousand unseen others.

The kind that reminds you that even a cup of hot chocolate given in the name of Christ will not lose its reward. Even if it doesn’t include marshmallows.