The Monster at the End of this Book

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was...

As you can see, it stars lovable, furry Grover from Sesame Street.  Grover has discovered, thanks to the book title, that there is a monster at the end of this very book, and he is downright worried about that.  Page after page, he warns the reader not to turn to the next page. 


As a child, I did not cooperate with his entreaties.  I turned each page gleefully.  Apparently, I was not the only one.


With each new page turn, Grover becomes increasingly insistent, panicked even.  He begs and pleads.  He attempts to tie down the pages with ropes and then with hammers, nails and 2x4's.  He erects a brick wall.  Each consecutive page shows the destruction created as the prior page bursts free from Grover's security measures.


Finally, on the penultimate page, a forlorn Grover makes one final desperate plea.

And yet, I turned the page.  You would have too, I bet.


At the end of the book, there is indeed a monster.  That monster is Grover.




I've thought about this book from time to time over the years, wondering if it is still in print.  


Yesterday, while grocery shopping, when I passed by the book and magazine section, there it was, The Monster at the End of this Book, right there front and center on the rack.


The timing of this discovery was interesting.  I had just received a big blow of bad news.  Nothing earth shattering, thankfully, but the type of lousy news that plays on old insecurities, pains, patterns.  The kind that causes me to doubt myself and God's goodness, that certainly makes me doubt the goodness of those around me.  


The past six months have been challenging and the past month more so.  Yesterday was just the proverbial straw on the camel.  Whether I've liked it or not, circumstances of late have pushed me to dig deep, to reevaluate my life choices, to consider what I want to be about at this point in my life, what God wants me to be about now.  I suppose the early forties is a good age for this sort of thing.


And so, I've been confronting the monsters, those very insecurities, pains and patterns stirred up by yesterday's news.  The stuff that keeps a gal up at night.  I feel myself gripping tightly to what I think is right, wanting to do everything so well that it's beyond criticism, wanting to manage circumstances and people and what those people think.  

I've been wary.  I've focused on the monster at the end of the book.  It is no mistake that I encountered this beloved book all these years later on such a discouraging day.  


Maybe the monsters are really not all that scary after all.  Certainly, there are scary and awful things in the world, but that's all the more reason not to fear the monsters that are not truly scary.  Maybe the monster is me.  That's certainly partly true, but it's not the entire story.  


In seeing the book, I'm reminded to relax and trust the Author, perhaps to even chuckle at my panic and futile security measures.  Maybe with the Author I can blow through some of these pages, the walls, the ropes, to get to a place that is clearly good.  Maybe I'll get to see reality with the Author's eyes.  


I am hopeful, though I still wrestle.  


And I take heart in one other little gem-of-a-message in the Grover book: