I Finish Everything And I Am Tired

You have never left a book unfinished in your life and you can feel what it has cost.

Thirty years of reading and not one abandoned. Some of them took months. One took nearly a year and you did not enjoy a single chapter of it after about page eighty, and you finished it, in April, and told nobody.

And now there is a book on your nightstand that you are not enjoying, and you are two hundred pages in, and the whole business feels heavy in a way that reading did not used to feel.

Here is the part that makes it hard to talk about. Finishing is meant to be the good quality. It is the thing people admire in you generally, not just about books. Which means the tiredness has nowhere to go, because complaining about it would be complaining about your own best trait.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a woman ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds one more thing to be behind on.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the record, because the record is the thing that is heavy and not the book.

Putting it down is allowed. Plainly, tonight, with no conditions attached and nothing to push through first.

Come unto me, all ye that labor

There is an invitation in Matthew 11 addressed to a very specific group, and the address is the part people skip.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28, King James Version)

Look at who it is aimed at.

All ye that labor and are heavy laden. Not the idle. Not the people who need a push. The invitation goes to the ones already carrying, and the qualification for it is being tired from work already done.

That matters here, because a woman who has finished every book she ever started is not somebody who needs encouragement. She is the laboring one in that sentence, and the sentence has something for her, and what it has is rest.

You are the one this sentence is addressed to, and thirty years of finishing has never once disqualified you from being handed rest. Matthew 11:28 aims the invitation at the laboring and the heavy laden rather than at the idle, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a nightstand with a book on it you do not want.

There is one more thing in it and it is what He does not say.

There is no condition. Nothing about finishing first. No suggestion that the load has to be got to a good stopping place before the rest is available. Come, and I will give you rest, and the giving is immediate in the sentence.

You have rest offered with the load still in your hands, and two hundred pages of something you dislike has never once had to be completed first. It is written and I will give you rest, the invitation attaches no condition to it anywhere, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The record is the weight

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being exact about.

The book is not heavy. The record is.

Two hundred pages of something dull is mildly annoying. What makes it unbearable is that abandoning it would be the first time, and a first time breaks a thirty year record, and thirty years is a lot of weight to put on one paperback.

So the actual question on the nightstand is not do I want to read this. It is am I still a person who finishes things, and that is an enormous question to be answering at ten at night about a book you do not like.

And that is why you keep reading it. Not for the story. To protect the record.

You are protecting a record and not reading a book, and thirty years of finishing has never once been the thing that made you a reader. Matthew 11:28 hands rest to the ones already carrying without asking them to set the load down neatly first, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman answering a very large question about a very small paperback.

And there is a second layer, and it is the honest cost.

A person who finishes everything reads slower over time, because every book gets weighed before it is started. If starting means committing, then starting is expensive, and expensive things get postponed.

So the record does not make you read more. It makes you read less, more grimly, with a longer gap before each one.

You have permission to start something without finishing it, and a book left at page two hundred has never once made you a person who quits. The written word addresses the tired rather than the lazy and offers rest with no completion asked for, and His Spirit is the one who takes a thirty year record off a woman's shoulders.

Put it down, and start another one tonight

So here is the assignment, and both halves happen tonight.

Put down the book that is not working tonight and start another one before you go to sleep.

Put it down. Not finish the chapter. Not get to a natural break. Close it where it is, and put it somewhere else in the house, and it does not go back on the nightstand.

And there is no caveat coming here. Nobody is going to tell you to push on a bit further and see, or to give it fifty more pages, or that it might pick up. It might. It does not matter. Closing it is allowed.

You are the one that invitation was addressed to, and thirty years of finishing have never once disqualified you from rest. The Holy Spirit is the one at that nightstand with you, and Matthew 11:28 aims the calling at the laboring and the heavy laden and attaches no condition to the giving.

Then start another one. Tonight, before you sleep, even if it is only one page of something else.

Here is why the second half is not optional.

If you only put it down, the evening ends on a stop, and a stop is what your whole record has taught you to read as a failure. Starting something else in the same twenty minutes replaces the ending with a beginning, and a beginning is a completely different thing to fall asleep on.

You are able to close a book at page two hundred and open another one in the same hour, and putting one down has never once been the same thing as giving up. Matthew 11:28 says come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman shutting a book she does not like.

You may find the closing physically hard, in your hands. That is thirty years leaving. Let it go, and pick up the other one.

You have rest available while the load is still in your arms, and a record you kept for three decades has never once been what God was asking you for. It is written and I will give you rest, the address is to the laboring and the heavy laden with no condition attached, and the Spirit of God is saying it over a nightstand tonight.