Defective Reflection

Come and see the glory of my Sovereign

Come to see the King express His love for His bride

See how majestic yet humbly He hangs there

A life to pay for a life, a ransom of great price

His love demanded He do something

All He could do was everything

His life He considered as nothing

The payment of a great bride price

He took her debt and guilt

And blood that must be spilt

In return He asks for nothing

Save what His blood purchased

A life to pay for a life, a bride of great worth

Will you come; will you come in haste

The glory of your Sovereign as He proves His love for you

Written 12/7/08 by JA Menter

I have had a fun, incredible, crazy past two weeks.  This Thanksgiving holiday I have eaten 7 consecutive Turkey dinners, spent 20 hours in front of a projector screen, played card games in excess of 10 hours, prayed for good weather and gotten snow, written 2 papers for classes and another 2 pages of my story, played football with young kids, and lost my sense of taste for 3 and a half days.

We start with last Friday.  Of course, it was the end of the last full week before Thanksgiving and it is acknowledged universally among college students that shortened weeks mean that nothing will be done and can just as easily be brushed aside.  That’s not what I did, but I had no intentions of really taking the two class days before Thanksgiving too seriously.

Friday, I organized a “couch warming” party because that Tuesday we’d gotten our new furniture delivered.  It’s so nice to have seating again, even if it isn’t downstairs anymore!   We watched “Oklahoma” from our comfortable couches in our new family room.  The group was small, but cozy and I think we all enjoyed ourselves. 

Saturday is a bit of an anomally.  I can’t recall much of what I did, mostly because I can’t remember if I had to work that day or not.  It was the day of the leadership retreat at church, though I didn’t have to go, and there was no Husker game to listen to.  Somehow, I occupied myself, but the specifics are lost amid my memory of all that followed.

Sunday- Church, Life Group, and coming home.  “Luther” was playing on the big screen that I must have helped set up on Saturday, among other things.  I watched for about an hourish before hastening off to work.  Here is where I discovered I didn’t have to work at all that week, since the dining center was closing before the evening meal on Tuesday.

Monday- I went to classes and finished watching the parts of “Luther” I’d missed.  I wrote a bit of my book and figured out some other things that had to do with that.  I went back to campus, unsure if my bible study was actually meeting.  Thank goodness it actually was.  Then the fun really begins!

Tuesday- I had two classes back to back and went home, glad that I didn’t have to work.  I wrote for a while and waiting for the young ones to return home from school.  Grace and I had agreed to watch FotR that day and we were very keen to start it right away.

Wednesday- I had the house practically to myself, since the high schoolers were still in school. There were no church functions that night due to Thanksgiving and the agenda for the night was watching “Kung Fu Panda”

THursday- I started a period of seven straight thanksgiving meals, two of which were on Thursday. First, I ate lunch with just the family, then I believe we watched the rest of FotR.  Supper that night included my uncle and his three generations of clan, as well as Casandra.  We played Dance Praise, or rather they did, amid talking with the relatives we hadn’t seen in a while.

Friday- Grace and I watched TTT before the Husker game.  Food that entire day was leftovers from the day before, thus what could be considered a single thanksgiving meal that spanned the whole day, or two meals separated by a Husker win:)!  After the game, many played card games or dominos (Mexican Train)

Saturday- Cook Clan Convention (:D) at Martha-maba’s in Norfolk and two more Turkey Day meals.  Before we left for the “Convention”, I burned my tongue on coffee, or that’s what I assume, causing my taste bids to be awol until Tuesday evening.  At Martha’s, I played cards, ate, played more cards, played football with my young cousins designing an offensive scheme that involved all of my teammates, won at pinch having taken all ten points in the final round, ate some more, and watched the beginning of the OU-OSU game, before pushing off for home thoroughly exhausted, having enjoyed myself considerably.

Sunday- Already by now, I’ve had six consecutive Turkey meals and now can’t taste anything except a very little bit. Even the salty and vinegary taste of my mom’s three bean salad was lost to my sensations of taste.  Church was having a Thanksgiving meal after the service and I was participating, thus a seventh Turkey meal.  After all was done at church, I played cardgames of various sorts all afternoon.  Grace, Casandra, and I went on a walk in the cold weather to end the day.

Monday-Schooltime again.  Grace and I watched the first disc of RotK, and I went to my bible study, the last official study of the semester. There, I prayed that a day nice enough to actually go fora walk would come.  I believe everyone knows that a prayer like that in early December is like praying for rain on the moon.  Yet it came the next day.

Unfortunately, the next day was a Tuesday, the day I traditionally have no time whatsoever.  To crunch my time even more, I had class material to read for a paper that was due today (Friday the 5th). So while it was a nice day outside, I had to remain indoors on campus reading about the Zionist movement of the early 20th century, work for five and a half hours, getting cut up in the process, and bike home just in time to fall asleep and start a day all over again.  The only good thing that happened that evening was I got my taste back in time to savor the mixure of flavors of soups at the soup bar we served.

Wednesday, I wrote a 5 page paper on the material I’d read and sawed up derby cars for Royal Rangers.  I woke up that morning with a shoulder that hurt really bad, but the pain was ignored as I biked to school with backpack forcing it backward.  the nice weather I prayed for and hoped to enjoy for another day was gone when I woke and ice was left in its place.  Ever a glass half full sort of guy, I remembered the times I rode through the snow to and from McDonalds, blazing through the foot deep drifts.

Thursday, I read 200 pages in 4.5 hours and wrote a response to it.  A two page double-spaces essay is a why bother and the length guaruntees that whether or not you might have something to say about the topic in question, you haven’t the space to speak clearly and back it up with examples, as every good argumentative essay should.

That brings us to today. Hours 21 and 22 will be spent in front of the projector, taking in the last disc of RotK. Those two papers were handed in and evaluations taken.  I delivered  a narative of my past two weeks as I promised and now will stop to rest and recoup before another weekend crazy in its own elaborations unfolds.

JA Menter

It has been a long time since I posted some things, and though I’m not blessed with the time to do this properly, (or really at all) right now.  There are things I will be posting, including the coolest, longest, sweetest, and yet not tasteful thanksgiving celebrations I had this past week and maybe something about school.  I don’t have time now because I should be reading a book about Columbus instead of procrastinating like this but quite often “procrastinate about procrastinating” is on my to do list. Alright, enough, Josh!  Friday will be the day I can disclose and divulge all.

JA Menter

When I got home from church and life group on Sunday, people were watching “Luther” on our new big screen projection system.  I have a intense love of that movie so I joined them for the half hour before I needed to go to work.  The back that I saw was when Martin Luther has been “kidnapped” by Prince Frederick of Saxony’s men and is translating the New Testament from Latin into German.  Spalatin, Prince Frederick’s secreetary, has the apt line, “It’s what Rome fears most!”  Luther’s reply is equally notable–“You can thank the Author for that.”  It was right after that that I had to leave to go to work.

Yesterday, I watched the rest of the movie where Luther helps put down the peasant revolt and gives a gift of the German New Testament to Prince Frederick whom he dedicated it to.  The look of Prince Frederick’s face is telling; he had probably never read the bible for himself, no matter how secularly educated he was, and certainly not in his mother tongue.  Imagine reading your favorite book in Spanish or some other language you hardly master in a high school foreign language classes, then imagine someone giving you a copy of that book in English in the same language as your thoughts.  Prince Frederick’s face beamed with excitement and his fingers shook, not with old age, as you’ll notice the actor who plays Prince Frederick is, but excitement and anticipation of something that would satisfy his desire.

How often do we take our English translation of the Bible for granted?  We have several dozen different translations of the Bible in the same language.  If we can’t understand the wording of a passage, we can go to a neighbor, friend, or sibling who has a different version and get it in different words, or go to a concordance to look up what the original word means.  This is stuff that couldn’t be said of scholarship even two hundred years ago, yet do we always take advantage of the amazing opportunity we’re given?  Are we diligent to seek out the scriptures?  Has it become so easy that we forget to do it?  Have we somehow complicated it unnecessarily, to the point that it becomes too hard to dig into?  Why don’t we have the same enthusiasm that Prince Frederick had when he gazed on the Holy Scriptures written for the first time in his own language?  has it become so commonplace that it’s given no place?  Do we take advantage of the opportunities we’re given or do we take those opportunities for granted?

It happened, the mask is crumbling, my charade is over; no one was buying it. I can no longer hide behind my intellectual verses, my personality, my responsibilities.  I’ve hinted to this many times in terms too vague for people to pick up on, but now it must be told.

Since June, and perhaps even further back, I’ve struggled with a shadow of depression.  I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, given all the things I’ve told you and the things I’ve done, but I often struggle to just get out of bed in the morning.  There are things that I used to enjoy that either don’t capture my interest anymore or I don’t ever do them anymore. I am prisoner to a demanding schedule I’ve created for myself in order to reach for a goal I’m not sure I have anymore. The life is being sucked out of me by things I thought I needed to do in order to be equipped to do what I thought I wanted to do.

The one thing I know I still enjoy is playing football, not coaching football necessarily, but playing it. The last time I did that was at a Cook family shindig this spring and before that it had been probably two and a half years. Again, because of the demands of school and work, I just haven’t had time to do that. I have a break from all that this weekend, but I can’t play football by myself like I play boardgames. Convincing siblings and relatives that they want to play is a task that is impossible for me; none share my enthusiasm for this sport.

In all of this, I struggle knowing that God has an abundant life in store for me and trusting that He provides that for me. It’s not that my faith has been shaken, but the feelings of insignificance, misdirection, and depression are hard to escape. They are the burden I ask that someone help me bear. They are the past I listen to all too often.  Despite the fronts I assault your perceptions with, I am just a boy, broken and isolated in my battle. I’m not alright; I’m broken inside.

As you will probably discover (if you haven’t already), I use uncommon words, metaphors, and word pairs that aren’t usually put together in order to create a distinct meaning, and then spend the next several sentences explaining how I arrived at those specific word groupings or defending my metaphor. It should be no surprise that I’m going to try that again here.

I wish that I had social stamina, the word grouping of the hour And here’s the anticipated expanation.  These two words have been used in various contexts, apart from the other, to mean many things.  “Social” almost always has to do with people or groups of people interacting on various levels and media. Direct verbal communication is the most commonly used medium for social interaction. But my curious word grouping wasn’t “social interaction”, was it?

Stamina refers to strength of physical constitution; power to endure disease, fatigue, privation, etc. (From www.dictionary.com)  It could be used instead of endurance, staying power, even will power.  Most people know of my endurance in running (I could run all day long) and my staying power in biking (I can bike for days), but honestly, the longer I run the more that endurance is about will power.

For example, early this summer, I went on a 9 mile run.  It was the longest run I had ever attempted up to that point.  It was a Tuesday, and people were watching “A Knight’s Tale” at the house.  We’d started it fairly late because supper didn’t get over until later.  I had decided the morning before that I was going to go on this 9 mile run.  Instead of ripping myself away from the movie and my friends to undertake this test of my physical endurance, I could have very easily just stayed where I was and tried it another night.  Granted, I wouldn’t have been ready for the 13+ mile run I attempted later that week, but I could’ve done nothing.  partly out of my integrity and partly by will power, I strapped in and set off.

In light of these observations for clarity, I want to again draw your attention to my peculiar word pair (Social Stamina). I think, by now, you understand what this means but let me expand it a little.  Almost a year and a half ago, I found myself quite isolated in a circle of friends I’d created for myself.  Things went on where I didn’t say more than the barest of bare minimum to anyone and spent weeks on end saying nothing at all.  While some of you might think that to be rather fun, take my word for it as a longtime introvert, it wasn’t healthy or safe.  It leaves time for the mind, or at least mine which is found to be active at all times to the chagrin of its possessor sometimes, to go places it really shouldn’t and I mean that in the most upright way possible.  An alternative world is all too easy to believe in instead of the real one, if one’s not involved in the real one.

At the beginning of this year, 2008, (actually much before that but then I was too comfortable in my chains to allow for this sort of growth) I was really challenged to get out and expand my social network as it were.  I have many friends that I’ve only met this year and longtime friendships only recently actually cultivated, but I still struggle at times engaging in this thing we call verbal communication.  It gets easier when the people talking actually have something to say, but often times I’m around people so long, they run out of things to say.  The absolute hardest thing for me to do is listen to people making noise for the sake of hearing themselves or just making noise.  This is when my social stamina, which has grown considerably this year, runs out and I find myself simply exhausted, physically and mentally.

To a certain degree, this happened after this weekend’s festivities.  My birthday on Friday started what I felt to be a four day celebration and a fifth day that is always hard for me to live through.  Not necessarily because I was the center of attention, but because I often made an effort in trying to develop this social stamina to at least command someone’s attention, (really anyone’s attention), I felt like I was involved in a lot of stuff Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and to a lesser degree Monday.   

I was certainly running on fumes by Sunday evening and had to go walking to force myself away from things. (Perhaps you have my answer, Rebekah, to whether or not you were right in guessing which one of my random facts was false?!)  By Monday, I was trying to turn my attention to the week of school, (here’s one of those plays on words that I should now be famous for saying: After my crazy Tuesday, I go into autopilot before I trip into fall break), though I still had a final celebration to make an appearance at before my evening bible study.  Then came Tuesday. Already exhausted in virtually every way one can be exhausted, I had a day in which I had to spend 12 hours on campus doing things I don’t particularly enjoy doing at a point in my life where my mind goes all over the place when it hasn’t a definite task to perform.  I really hate being tied to a specific place without the ability to write down my thoughts.  Too often, exhaustion that I know I should feel is in conflict with my thoughts that keep coming regardless of my physical condition or even my ability to order them sufficiently or will power to keep them in check.  I end with this observation of an obversation: Apparently, I wear my mind on my sleeve, but few actually tell me they can read it.

JA Menter