Notice what repentance is attached to in that verse. Not shame. Not probation. Refreshing.
We tend to treat repentance as the fine we pay before we are allowed back into God’s company. So we delay it. We wait until we feel sorry enough, or until we have strung together enough good days to arrive with something in our hands. And the delay does its own damage — distance always hardens into something.
But turning around is not the price of return. It is the return. The moment you turn, you are already facing Him.
You do not have to clean yourself up on the way. That has never been the arrangement. Come as you are, today, and let the refreshing be what happens after the turning rather than what you have to earn before it.
