Why can't I have what I want right now?

We want the good marriage, the connection, and the peace. We want them now. After all the waiting and trying, we grow into that life by becoming someone who can hold it.

The marriage is not being held back from us. It asks for a version of us we have not grown into yet.

If you tried to run a marathon tomorrow with no training, your body would give out. The distance is the same for everyone. You are not yet built to handle it.

What we want in a relationship works the same way. The marriage we desire needs a grounded, present man, someone who can stay in tension without folding. If that version of us arrived tomorrow, we would still feel the stretch. The new way of standing would not yet be ours. The work is becoming someone who can hold what we want when it comes.

In a day, that looks like acting as if. You are lining yourself up with the man you want to become. You speak the way he would speak. You respond the way he would respond. You hold your center the way he would hold his.

You grow into what is waiting by living a little of it now. The marriage you want is close. It is waiting for you to become someone who can hold it.