The plagues do not arrive all at once. Freedom, even Divine freedom, unfolds in stages.
We often want liberation to be a single event. Va'era teaches that it is a sequence, plague by plague, negotiation by negotiation, hardening and softening in turn.
The people themselves are not immediately convinced. 'They did not listen to Moshe, from shortness of breath and hard labor.' Bondage exhausts the very capacity to imagine freedom.
This week, be patient with a slow liberation, your own or someone else's. The pace of freedom is not evidence of its absence.