There is a particular kind of ache that creeps in when you feel late to your own life. 

It's as if everyone else received the invitation early, and you just arrived, breathless, trying to catch up. You scroll through highlight reels and your mind does more than compare; it keeps a silent tally of milestones and shining outcomes that whisper, “You should be further along by now.”

I know that feeling well.

It shows up while folding laundry in silence and wondering how another week slipped through your fingers. It knocks during the quiet moment after you close your laptop, asking whether you did enough. It lingers in the pause between someone else’s good news or big win, and your strained smile.

During moments like these your amygdala does what it was designed to do: signal danger. Yet the threat is not a wild animal, it’s the fear of being left behind. Your prefrontal cortex tries to reason with that fear, but the emotional noise is loud, and the Reticular Activating System (RAS) starts scanning for proof. You notice everyone who seems more certain, more settled, more “on track.”

But what if you are not behind at all?

The Myth of a Universal Timeline

There is no divine stopwatch measuring your worth and no heavenly red pen stamping “late” beside your name. Pressure to catch up comes from timelines we never agreed to, absorbed from culture, family expectations, social media, and our own insecurities.

In Two Streets Named Hard I describe a season when I felt I was sprinting just to stay in place. I was doing everything “right,” yet still believed I was trailing behind an invisible pace car. I kept thinking that if I pushed a bit harder, or did just a little more, rest would finally come.

Rest does not wait on the far side of the finish line. It grows out of walking in rhythm. Often the harder road is not the one that demands speed, it is the one that invites faithful, unhurried steps even while others appear to sprint past. That is where God often does His deepest work, within the quiet, the steady, and the uncelebrated practice of showing up.

When Pace Turns into a Prison

Hustle culture equates speed with value. The faster you move, the sooner you will be enough, or so it says. Chasing a timeline that was never meant for you will only leave you breathless.

Your calling is not ordered by someone else’s clock, and neither is your healing. When you measure life against another person’s pace, you miss the miracle unfolding in your own story. 

The leaders and female business coach I admire did not arrive by sprinting, they arrived by staying. They kept a steady pace, always doing the next right thing, even when nothing seemed to change and no one was clapping.

Trust the God Who Sees You

The enemy would love you to believe you are behind because that belief drives overcommitment, overfunctioning, and frantic efforts to outrun the ache instead of healing it. 

God does not trade in shame, nor speak through comparison. He speaks through presence.

You are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be for what He will do next. The path may not be easy, but you do not walk it alone. When I step aside and let God set the pace, He always lights the way one step at a time.

So breathe. Shut down the voice that whispers you are not enough. Put down the measuring stick that never fits. Remember that growth is not always forward motion; sometimes it is roots stretching deeper where no one can see.

God knows how to redeem time. He is never in a rush. And you do not have to be either.

Dr Barbara

Want to go deeper?

I write more about this in Two Streets Named Hard, especially Chapter 7, which explores the pressure to “catch up” and the invitation to trust God’s timing for your life.

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