My dictionary problems

So, I'm thinking of a word.  But I don't if it exists.  And I'm not sure how to look for it in the dictionary.  Since I don't know if it exists, neither do I know how it is spelled.  Since I don't know how it is spelled, I wouldn't know if I was on the right page of the dictionary to look for the word.

So I will try and explain the meaning of the potential word:

When I run across a new and interesting word in conversation or reading, I have this internal compulsion to look the word up in a dictionary. (I don't know exactly why this is.  My dad telling me, "Look it up yourself" so many times, rather than telling me what a word meant or how to spell it, perhaps.?)

My wife recently gave me as a gift the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, in a (possibly futile) effort to keep me from buying the complete Oxford English Dictionary which is a 20-volume set, and costs around $850, and for which I have taken out a $1000 life insurance policy on Gracie, so that, in case she dies, I can immediately purchase this wonderful reference.  (I'm not making that up.)  I know that taking out a life insurance policy on my wife in order to buy a dictionary might label me as...eccentric.  And I'm okay with that.  But who else has a wife who puts her foot down and says that she will not co-habitate with a 20-volume dictionary?  What was I supposed to do?

Anyway, I guess you might be getting a clue by now that I really, really like words.

Which brings me back to my quandary about this word that I don't know how to find.

So there I was, reading to Gracie this morning from Bread and Wine and William Willemon makes the following statement, "Jesus seeks even more radical metanoia."

[...Metanoia?..] I think to myself.  [Metanoia?  Meta...maybe 'over'? maybe...Noia...hmmm...para-noia...what could ...'-noia' mean?]  I am staring at the word, trying to break it down in my head, incapable of continuing to read with this nagging ignorance eating away at me.

I jump up, and stride toward my desk...

Gracie laughs.  "I knew you were going to do that...I should have been counting the seconds to see how long it took you to get up."

So there I am flipping through Volume 1 of the Shorter OED.  J....K...L...M...Ma...Me...Met...Metan...

I am looking at the top of the page at the "bracketing words".  The words at the top of the page that tell what the first and last word on each page is until...at last, and deeply satisfying it is..."metamer/metaphysis". I've found it!  The right page in the dictionary. The page with the definition that I need to ease my ignorance.

So I found the meaning of the word "metanoia" (go look it up for yourself), but I also found a definition that I don't know a word for...what is the word for the satisfying realization that you have finally found your "place" that you are searching for in a book.  For realizing that, while your eyes have not yet found the word you are looking for, you know that word is on the page your fingers have flipped to?

I don't know?  Dictopagination?  Logobracketing?

I guess the OED staff needs to come up with a 400-volume set, which, instead of starting with the word and then giving you the definition, starts with all of the possible definitions and then gives you the word.  Kind of an Oxford English Dictionary - Jeopardy Edition.

If they do that, then I'll need to take out another life insurance policy on Gracie, but this time I will need to include enough to put a Dictionary Addition onto our house. Sweet.