Gothic Orthodox icon collage of time and judgment. (Image: Monk & Martyr original)
If you’ve ever looked at your life, compared it to others, and thought, “I’m late to everything,” you are not alone.
We grow up following an invisible schedule:
Graduate by this age.
Marry by that one.
Career sorted by this year.
Miss a checkpoint, and it feels like you broke something you cannot fix.
But here is the uncomfortable, freeing truth I keep coming back to:
God does not build His plans around our timelines, charts, or five-year plans. He is not walking around with your birthday circled in red, panicking because you are not “there” yet.
He is not linear. We are.
What looks like a delay to us might not be a delay at all. It might be the route.
Life Is Not A Track Meet
Picture a race.
One runner stumbles, goes down hard, and everyone in the stands draws the same conclusion:
They were doing fine.
They slipped.
Game over.
That is usually how we narrate our own story.
We think about the years we drifted, the addiction that knocked us around, the relationship that wrecked us, the job we stayed in too long, the sin we kept going back to. Then we quietly decide, “There is no realistic way I can ever end up where I was supposed to be.”
But here’s where I have had to let God correct me.
You and I see a stumble.
God sees where that stumble sits inside a much bigger arc.
With Him, a season that looks like backpedaling can sit right next to a season of wild acceleration. There are people who wandered for years and then watched God move so quickly that it almost felt unfair. Careers that took off late. Marriages that came after long disappointment. Spiritual growth that looked invisible for a decade, then suddenly showed up like a tree that had been quietly rooting itself the whole time.
On paper, it reads like lost time.
In God’s hands, it can become material for a comeback you never saw coming.
God Thinks In Maps, Not Timelines
We usually think in straight lines.
If I keep this pace, I will finish my degree by this date.
If I save this much, I will hit my financial goal by that year.
If I grind hard enough, I will finally land the promotion.
There is nothing wrong with planning. The problem comes when we treat our plan like it is sacred and treat God like He is the one who needs to catch up.
A better way to see it is this.
God sees your life like a map.
He knows where the traffic jams are.
He knows the shortcuts that look smart but lead to a dead end.
He knows the quieter side roads that look slower but actually carry you around a wreck you cannot see yet.
From the outside, it might not look miraculous at all. No glowing angels. No dramatic visions. Just a series of very ordinary choices that somehow line up at the right time, with the right people, in the right place.
That does not make it less guided.
Normal and supernatural can sit in the same story.
Sometimes the miracle is that God steers you through the mess of real life using very human things. A random conversation, a closed door, a job you took just to pay the bills, a church you almost did not visit.
We look back and say, “That was just common sense.”
He looks back and says, “That was me, using common sense.”
Why God Lets You Sit In The “Slow” Season
The hardest part is not when life is moving. The hardest part is when nothing seems to be happening. When it feels like you are stuck in neutral and everyone else’s life is hitting fast forward.
If God can speed things up so easily, why does He let some of us take the long way around?
One uncomfortable word: character.
Before God increases the speed, He usually increases the weight of who you are on the inside. That does not show up on Instagram, but it shows up everywhere else.
Slow seasons often expose things we would never notice while everything is exciting.
Impatience.
Hidden pride.
Fragile faith.
Addictions we justify.
You may be praying, “God, give me influence, open doors, expand my reach.”
Meanwhile, God might be saying, “I am not going to sabotage you by giving you something your character cannot hold yet.”
Acceleration without preparation is not a blessing. It is a setup for collapse.
Nobody enjoys hearing that. But think about all the people who got what they wanted too early and were crushed by it. The platform that became a trap. The relationship that became an idol. The money that amplified problems instead of healing them.
Sometimes that slow, confusing middle is God protecting you from outcomes you are not ready to carry.
God Changes The Pace On Purpose
One of the patterns you see over and over again in Scripture and real life is this rhythm of speed up, slow down, speed up again.
There are seasons where everything breaks loose.
Opportunities show up.
People notice your work.
You feel sharp, alive, finally in your lane.
Then, almost without warning, things quiet down.
Prayers feel heavier.
Doors close.
You feel less “useful” than you used to.
The reflex story in our heads is usually, “I messed it up somehow. God must be disappointed. Maybe I missed my one shot.”
But what if both seasons belong in the same design?
The fast seasons stretch your faith outward.
The slow ones send your roots downward.
Both matter.
God cares more about your alignment with Him than the pace you prefer. Sometimes, He will slow you down to keep you close. Other times, He will move things quickly, not to flatter you, but to accomplish something in a short window that only He can see.
The Trap Of Sacred Spreadsheets
I love a good plan. I like calendars. I like numbers. I like knowing where things are headed. There is nothing spiritual about pretending you do not care.
The problem shows up when our plan quietly becomes the thing we trust more than the Planner.
We start saying things like:
“If I do this for two more years, then life will finally start.”
“If I hit these milestones, then I will be useful to God.”
“If I do not reach X by age Y, then what is the point.”
We turn our projections into laws.
The result is that every delay feels like a personal insult. Every detour feels like proof that God skipped over us to help someone else.
But God is not boxed in by your planning app. He is not late because your spreadsheet says you should be further along. He does not owe you a miracle by a certain birthday.
He works with His own measurement, His own scale, His own sense of “right time.” He sees not only what you want, but the ripple effects of giving it to you now, five years from now, or not at all.
That is not always comforting in the moment. But it is honest.
What You Actually Do While You Wait
So this is where the rubber hits the road.
If God controls the pace and the route, what are you supposed to do in the middle of the tension between “not yet” and “I am tired of waiting”?
A few things I have had to preach to myself, repeatedly.
Stay faithful when it feels pointless. Faithfulness almost never feels cinematic. It looks like praying when you are tired. Showing up to church when you feel flat. Doing your work with integrity when nobody will notice. Choosing repentance again and again instead of sliding into numbness.
That is the soil where long-term fruit grows (John 15:4).
Refuse the story that says you are behind
You might be behind someone else’s schedule. Fine. That does not mean you are behind in God’s story for you.
You are not a factory product. You are not supposed to match everyone else’s timeline. When that panic rises in your chest, remind your heart that God can redeem years in a way you cannot even calculate.
Let God hold the accelerator. If you are naturally driven, slow seasons feel like failure. If you are naturally cautious, rapid change feels like a threat. Either way, the invitation is the same.
You can hand the throttle back to God, again and again. In prayer. In decisions. In the way you talk about your own life.
Remember who the outcome is for. God is not trying to show off how quickly He can fix your life like it is some cosmic game show. The point of acceleration is not hype, it is His glory growing in and through you.
Whatever He gives you, whenever He gives it, is meant to draw your heart closer to Him, not pull you away. If you can keep that aim in view, it changes how you interpret both delay and breakthrough.
You Are Not Too Late. You Are Not Too Early.
If one sentence needs to lodge in your mind, let it be this:
You are not disqualified because your story has losses in it.
You may have whole chapters behind you that you wish you could rewrite. Years of drifting. Years of feeling stuck. They do not have to be erased for God to do something new.
In His timing, those chapters can become context. Not a curse.
You might not see the pattern yet. Most people do not while they are standing in the middle of it. But that does not mean there is no pattern.
So for now, in the tension, you can do something simple and stubborn.
Trust Him with the pace.
Trust Him with the route.
Trust Him with the pieces of your story that you would never have chosen.
He knows how to lead you from where you are to where you are meant to be, even if the path folds back on itself, loops around, and feels slow compared to everyone else’s highlight reel.
One day, you will see the map more clearly than you do right now.
And you may end up thanking Him for the detours you spent years resenting.
I’m the writer behind Monk & Martyr. I don’t have formal seminary training, and I take comfort in the fact that Saint Francis of Assisi did not either. My “training” has been lived conversion and the slow work of following Jesus through real seasons of life. I write honest, Scripture-rooted encouragement that points back to one thing. You’re loved more than you know, and Christ’s grace is bigger than whatever you’re carrying.