It's not an event, its a process.
This came from a podcast I was listening to regarding becoming a published author … they were talking about how you really don't get to that place where "you've arrived" by an event, i.e. getting your book published (or even finished!), but rather, there were lots of steps along the way; it is a process.
I was reflecting on this and thought about how much of life is truly the same. When I was in college – a naive 18 or 19-year-old, I remember having a lively discussion with God (really, I was yelling at Him) about how this hard thing was SO DIFFICULT (it was probably something like an o-chem test) and When was I ever going to get a break? I remember that He kind of chuckled and asked me what I thought adult life was?
It was in that moment that I realized that real life, adult life, is a series of challenges that you overcome. Like an assembly line, they come one after another – but in the process, you become (hopefully) strong, compassionate, empathetic, creative; and the pie'ce de re'sistance ... wise.
It's like this with everything.
You don't become a mother just because you have a baby. You grow into it.
Fathers earn the right to speak into their children's lives.
Proficiency in a job comes not just through time, but evaluation, feedback, mistakes, failures.
When you say, "I do" you don't become "one" – that takes three or four decades of listening, struggling, playing, crying, working at it.
Embrace the process, because fighting it causes you to forfeit the benefits (and its exhausting).