I Read The Last Page To Get Out

You turned to the last page on Tuesday, read four paragraphs, closed it, and then felt slightly grubby about it.

That is the pattern and it has happened maybe six times over the years. A book stops working somewhere around page two hundred, and you cannot bring yourself to abandon it, so you read the ending, and the ending discharges the obligation, and the book goes back on the shelf technically dealt with.

And then the feeling arrives. Not guilt exactly. Something more like having got out of something by the wrong door.

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 exit, because there was nothing wrong with wanting one.

You were trying to get released. That instinct was correct. There was simply a door available that you did not know you were allowed to use.

He set me in a large place

There is a line in Psalm 118 about how a rescue felt, and the image in it is spatial rather than emotional.

I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place. (Psalm 118:5, King James Version)

Notice the answer.

He did not remove the distress and He did not explain it. He set the man in a large place, which is a change of room rather than a change of circumstance. The pressure of the psalm is narrowness, and the answer to narrowness is space.

That is a very particular kind of relief and it is exactly the one you were reaching for on Tuesday. A book that has stopped working is a narrow place. You wanted out of the narrow place, and reading the ending was an attempt at a large one.

You are made for a large place, and wanting out of a narrow one has never once been a fault in you. Psalm 118:5 answers the distress with room rather than with an explanation, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a woman who read four paragraphs of an ending on a Tuesday.

There is one more thing in it worth having.

He set me. It is done to the man. The psalm does not have him negotiating his way out or finding a clever exit; the setting is the Lord's act, and it lands as a gift rather than as something achieved.

You have space given rather than earned, and getting out of a book has never once needed to be clever. It is written the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place, the setting is His act and the room is a gift, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The door you used is the one you had

Here is the mechanism, and there is nothing shameful in it.

You had one exit and you used it.

In your reading, a book gets finished. That is the only recognized way out. And there is no other door in the building, so when a book becomes unbearable and finishing is impossible, the only available release is a technicality: read the ending, and the finishing box gets ticked.

That is not cheating. That is a person in a narrow room using the one exit that exists.

And notice the cost of the workaround. Reading the last page spoils the book permanently, which means the workaround takes something away that abandoning it would have left intact. A book you set down at page two hundred can be picked up again in four years. A book you read the ending of cannot.

You are using a workaround that costs more than the door you were not shown, and reading an ending has never once been the only way out of a book. Psalm 118:5 answers a narrow place with a large one and never once with a technicality, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who has used the only exit she had six times.

And there is a second thing, and it is the small unfairness in it.

The grubby feeling afterward is not about the book. It is about having done something slightly sideways, and it lands as a comment on your character, and it is not one. It is what a person feels after using a workaround, and a workaround only exists where a proper door is missing.

You have a door that costs nothing, and a sideways exit has never once been a description of who you are. The written word has the room given as an answer to the distress, and His Spirit is the one who opens a plain door in a narrow place.

Put it down, and start another one

So here is the assignment, and the whole of it is that the plain door is allowed.

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

Close it. Not the last page. Not four paragraphs of the ending to be released. Close it at page two hundred and something, exactly where it sits, and leave the ending unknown.

And nobody here is going to say push on. Nobody is going to suggest fifty more pages. The permission is plain: it can be closed.

Then start another one tonight, ten pages of it, before you sleep.

You are set in a large place, and wanting out of a narrow one has never once been a fault in anybody. The Spirit of God is present in that circle of chairs, and it is written that I called upon the LORD in distress, and the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place.

Here is why leaving the ending unknown matters.

Not knowing is what keeps the book alive. It stays a real object with something in it, available in four years to a different reader in the same chair, and the unfinished state is not a wound. It is just a bookmark that is going to sit there a while.

And starting something else in the same twenty minutes is what makes the closing a swap rather than a defeat, and a swap needs no release at all because nothing has been left dangling.

You are able to close it without reading the ending, and an unknown ending has never once been an unfinished obligation. Psalm 118:5 says the LORD answered me, and set me in a large place, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman closing a book at page two hundred with the last page unread.

The pull to just check the back is going to arrive as you close it. Do not check. Leave it alive.

You have the large place already, and a narrow book has never once been able to keep a reader in it. It is written I called upon the LORD in distress: the LORD answered me, the answer was space and it was given rather than negotiated, and the Spirit of God is giving it here.