You have to be careful of what and who is connected to you in this season.
That line from a pastor’s sermon at Sunday service has been ringing in my ears ever since I heard it. And it got me thinking about seasons, not just the ones I talk about in my TEDx talk, my work, or in conversations with friends, but the season that has caused the most struggle. The season where I have autonomy.
I’ve never really had full autonomy in the way society defines it. I’ve always had to decide between an A or a B. Always been in the position of leading, especially in corporate spaces. But what the pastor said about people struggling with autonomy, with the chronic need to have every piece of the puzzle solved immediately, was this: your timeline might be too long. Or sometimes, it’s not about years at all. Sometimes it’s right now. And if your timeline interferes with what God has planned for you, that interference might be the problem.
I was truly gagged. Does this mean the five- and ten-year plan we were taught to build was a lie?
We keep focusing on our inadequacies rather than our capacity.
It took me back to when I was eighteen, in university. My friends and I had a conversation we’d heard from the seniors. It felt like everyone was talking about being married by twenty-five. It was the goal. (I chuckle when I think about it now.) Whether it was Hillsong culture or UK culture, I’m still not entirely sure. Maybe we needed to be married younger so we could grow together and not ‘sin’ anyway- I digress. But twenty-five was the big age.
While my friends were laser-focused on partnership, I was different. I was rebellious about it, actually. I made a pact with three of my eligible guy friends; they were all ambitious and incredibly smart, and I said: if we’re not married by thirty, we’ll figure it out then. (A girl still needed options.)
Funny how life works now: everyone hit twenty-five with a spouse or a long-term partner. And me? I stayed ambitious. I did three internships with major law firms by twenty-one, which actually put me off law school. Then I gained a training contract. Later, I worked in investment banking just for the money. I built businesses and sold businesses. While they were prioritizing partnership, I was prioritizing capacity and building my own infrastructure so that if and when partnership came, I wouldn’t be broken by it.
I’m not saying either path was wrong. I’m saying I’m grateful I didn’t rush mine, even if I learned hard lessons from it.
We’ve been conditioned by Disney, by church, by social circles to put marriage at a focal point. But what if the focal point should be yourself, for a period of time?
Society has built a specific schedule for many of us. Marriage by twenty-five. Established career by thirty. Children before thirty-five. House, security, fame, status AND all by forty. And when you don’t hit those marks, there’s this looming, dooming pressure. External voices asking… What are you waiting for? Why aren’t you married? Don’t you want kids? Don’t you want a home?
What no one asks is: Are you TRULY ready?
I’ve watched brilliant women rush into marriages because the schedule said it was time. I’ve watched good men step into fatherhood before they understood what fatherhood required. I’ve watched people build homes with people they weren’t prepared to build with. And the result? Broken homes. Hurt children. Fractured lives. All because we didn’t ask the question…. ‘Do I have the capacity for this, or just the pressure to hit a deadline?’
The pastor said something else during that sermon. “Do not pray for a wife or husband if you can’t cultivate a garden”. And honestly, it’s true. We don’t teach people to cultivate gardens anymore. We teach them to rush into partnerships, to follow the schedule, to just tick things off a list. We don’t teach them that love, partnership, and forever require preparation, discipline, focus, and God at the center.
I think that’s why I stayed busy. Tennis, swimming, gym, building businesses, working nine-to-nine. I didn’t have time to be distracted. Idle hands make trouble, as they say. And I think more people need that. More people need to be occupied with building themselves before they build with someone else.
And I’m not saying you have to be perfect or fully formed before the people at the back start shouting. I’m saying: prepare and practice. Preparation isn’t perfection. It’s simply just showing up ready to learn.
But society doesn’t sell that narrative. Society sells the deadline.
Your schedule vs God’s schedule. One creates anxiety. The other creates trust.
I walked away from service, and it dawned on me what the pastor was trying to illuminate. When you’re constantly trying to hit someone else’s deadline, you’re not listening to God’s. You find yourself fighting what’s right in front of you. Fighting against the person you’re becoming. Let’s sprinkle some anxiety into that, and you start making decisions from a place of scarcity. The voices in your head get louder. I need to get married before I’m thirty-five because what if no one wants me?
Instead of standing in capacity. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to know that…. I’m ready when I’m ready, and God’s timing is better than mine?
I know women and men who are terrified of being unmarried after forty. And I understand the fear; I would never trivialize it. Yes, there’s the biological clock. Yes, there are statistics. Yes, there are real limitations that come with age. But I’m also conscious of why we’re terrified, because society told us forty was too late. Because we believed the deadline more than we believed ourselves.
My grandmother, may her soul rest in peace, had her last son at sixty and lived to 106. So timelines have never really been a concern for me. I’ve seen what’s possible when you stay healthy, stay intentional, stay focused on building. When you don’t let a schedule define your worth.
And that belief that the deadline matters more than your readiness is costing us. It’s costing us our sense of self-worth. It’s driving depression and anxiety. It’s causing us to move into partnerships unprepared to show up fully. We mislabel attraction as love and call cohabitation readiness for marriage.
Anything you mislabel, you end up misusing.
So here’s my real gripe. Not that marriage is bad (I actually love being in partnership). I love building something beautiful with someone. And it’s not that partnership is wrong. It’s that we’ve mislabeled it. We’ve made it a checkbox instead of a commitment. A deadline instead of a choice, and now a finish line instead of a foundation.
When you misuse something that sacred, it breaks.
So what’s the answer? It’s not to abandon the idea of partnership. It’s to cultivate capacity before you step into commitment. Ask yourself the hard question: Am I ready for this, or am I just running out of time?
Because those are two very different places to make a decision from. And both are unfair, to yourself and to the person standing beside you.
My gift to you, and what I’m learning to give myself, is grace and pace. Grace that you’re not married at thirty if that’s not where you are. Grace that you don’t have kids yet. Grace that your timeline looks different from everyone else’s. And pace, real, intentional pace, to build yourself, get to know yourself for whatever comes next.
Because God’s timing is always better than ours. Truly better. And the moment we stop fighting it, the moment we stop trying to hit marks that aren’t ours to hit, everything shifts. And you get to choose not out of fear but out of capacity.
So be intentional about the schedule you’re chasing. Make sure it’s yours and truly aligned.
And on that note, this is your reminder to try and live your life to a T.