Repentance is a gradual process: final response is awarded not to specific isolated acts but to the whole.
The various components, the desire to act, the performing of the deed based on anticipation, the yearning, disappointment, and hope, are rewarded, if at all, by partial answers.
In other words, a response to turning is given to a man as “something on account,” the rest to be paid out later.
A person generally hears the longed-for answer not when he puts his question, not when he is struggling, but when he pauses on a summit and looks back on his life.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz