pieces of grace

It’s that time of year again. It’s freezing in your house (think 60 degrees Fahrenheit), and your mother refuses to turn on the heater due to exorbitant fees. Meanwhile, you can’t feel your fingers or toes and will surely drop dead at any moment. But not to worry. You’re not alone. I am here to commiserate with you, and being a sufferer of extremely bad blood circulation myself,  my years of experience have given me enough expertise to offer a few tips (Ok, so not really, but this is what I do, and if you want to try it too, that’s cool).

1) Dress in layers. Preferably a long undershirt of some kind (if you don’t have one, ask your mom. She probably does), but a tight tank top that blocks out the cold air can also be quite helpful. Next stack on one or two layers of long-sleeve shirts, or a one long-sleeve shirt and a sweater (or, if you’re daring, two layers and then a sweater). If you’re still cold, add a winter coat jacket. Yes, you will feel ridiculous  looking like an inflated marshmallow in your own house, but trust me, it works wonders. Slippers are a must, as socks really aren’t quite enough to keep your feet warm. If this still isn’t enough for you because you just have an abnormally low resistance to cold like me, wear a warm scarf.  An absolute last resort is mittens. If you are still cold, continue down the list.

2) Run your hands repeatedly under the faucet with scorching hot water. Do this with caution, obviously, as you don’t want to burn yourself (and be careful about desensitizing yourself after sticking your hands under for long periods of time), but doing this a couple of times will definitely help you stay warm. Putting your hands to your cheek immediately after will be especially rewarding.

3) An equally effective alternative is drinking something hot. Even if it’s something as simple as hot water, just fill the cup with boiling water and sit with your hands around it for a couple minutes and when it’s cooled down enough, take some nice, deep sips. Other good options are tea and hot chocolate.

4) Shut yourself in a room with a bunch of computers on, preferably at least two desktops. Just keep the door closed and the room will gradually become very insulated. Not a very quick way to get warm, but if you stay in the room for the most of the day, you are guaranteed to stay quite warm.

5) Wrap yourself in an electric blanket and turn it up to the highest degree of heat. Apply to whichever section of your body is the coldest. If your upper body is more prone to coldness, wrap it around your shoulders like a shawl. If it’s your legs and feet that are more sensitive, just cover them constantly with the blanket. If you are fortunate enough to have two electric blankets, that’s definitely a double win.

If none of these are enough for you, start begging and moaning about how cold it is. Or write posts like this one so your parents will feel bad enough that they’ll want to turn on the heater out of shame. I’ll admit that we’ve all given in at various points, but for now I can say rather cheerfully that I am wearing 3 layers and wrapped in an electric blanket sitting in a room full of computers with no heater on. While my feet are still quite cold, I can at least feel my hands, and that is certainly something to be thankful for. Welcome to the holiday season.

I guess I’ve always been a “Daddy’s girl.” A fair amount of my Facebook profile pictures are with him, mostly because he’s just that good at making faces. I share his love for singing, though, I will humbly admit, he’s better at it than I am. I’d rather not share this fact with him, however, since it would stroke his ego immensely and merely give him more reason to karaoke around the house at the most absurd hours in the loudest possible voice. I even kind of look like him when I smile, which I always jokingly groan about because I don’t really like my smile. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a little too big – it really hides my eyes so I end up looking like some kind of inane simpleton with Asian eyes. I used to smile all the time for dance performances until a girl told me that when I smiled I looked like “a retarded dog.” After that, I became incredibly self-conscious about my smile. But I digress. I mention all these things about being a Daddy’s girl because I was listening to the song “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman today and it almost made cry. You can listen to it here, or at least until Youtube takes it down. My linking it here will probably increase that likelihood, but whatevs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUk5SZ18WhY

It’s really a cute and touching song, describing a little girl growing up and dancing with her father at various stages in her life, and that he has to cherish these times of dancing because “all too soon the clock will strike midnight and she’ll be gone.” The whole time, though, all I could think about was how Chapman lost his youngest daughter when his son accidentally hit her in the driveway. At first, I thought he had written this song for her, but it actually turns out that he wrote this song before the accident happened and that he had written it for all his “Cinderellas.” That made the song a little less sad for me, but even so, it reminded me of two things:

1) How close my dad and I are and how I don’t want to lose that. Well, I’m actually really close to both of my parents. I’m definitely a Mommy’s girl, too. I just want to put that out there in case she reads this and gets all hurt. I think my dad and I are more openly gushy about it, though. His nickname for me is “Baby.” And we have various routines that we go through that would probably make a majority of you throw up (my mom certainly does). I remember many times throughout high school when we would go through them and he would say, “When you go to college you’ll be too embarrassed and just ignore me, or you’ll be too busy with your new boyfriend.” Whenever he said that I would say “never,” but now that I think about it, I realize how much more cynical I’ve gotten about it. I now make fun of him more than I go through these routines. Maybe it’s because I like to think I’m too “grown up” for these kinds of things. But remembering them makes me realize just how little things like that are important for preserving our closeness, and they probably mean a lot to him. There’s a scene in Meet the Parents where Ben Stiller’s girlfriend runs up to her father, played by Robert DeNiro, and she jumps on him like a little girl and they go through a little routine. I want to be like that. No matter how old I am, I think I’ll always be his baby. So why not keep dancing like Cinderella? Hopefully that part of me will never be gone.

2) I was just really struck by Chapman’s tragedy. I found an article where they interviewed him and his family in their first public interview after the accident and one thing they said really spoke to me:

When asked whether or not the accident brought them to question their faith, Chapman confessed that it did, “absolutely,” but explained to the GMA anchor that faith is believing without having all the answers.

“My son said the other day that, ‘You know, yeah, we are family – like people say – of great faith … but we’re a family with a lot of questions,’” Chapman said. “But that’s what faith is. It’s living with the questions. That doesn’t mean you have the answers. That’s exactly what faith is.”

Faith is living with the questions. That was such a great reminder for me, because coming to college, it’s been such an exciting time of renewing my faith in my true Father. But that doesn’t stop the questions. I had such a struggle with that in high school, and I think the ultimate thing God taught me in high school was that it’s okay to have doubts and questions. I’ve sometimes wondered that if I’m too absorbed in my faith right now and not questioning as intellectually as I did in high school. That was one of my major concerns, but God’s reminded me that that’s okay. And really, that’s what faith is about. It also just puts so much into perspective; I haven’t suffered a tragedy as drastic as the Chapman family, and yet they remain in their faith in spite of and even because of the questions. Everyone’s going to have their ups and downs, but I’m just so thankful because right now, God has just given me so much peace and every day I’m reminded of His overwhelming love. This song reminded me that I’m a Cinderella to an even greater Father in heaven, and that I’m a little princess in His eyes. I want to dance with that Father forever.

Wow, sorry, this was really supposed to be a short entry, but it turned out rather long. The best part about this is no one’s going to read this entry because I deactivated my Facebook for two weeks so it won’t feed into Facebook like it usually does. But may I just say, life without Facebook is amazing. It’s given me the time to focus, reflect, and be with God. I thought it would cause me so much stress, but it’s given me so much more peace instead.