Taubah in English is translated as repent. The word repentance does not carry what the Arabic word Taubah carries 

The word appears throughout the Quran. A servant strays from the path. A servant turns around. A servant comes home to his Lord. The Promised Messiah^(as) said : It is appointed for seekers that they should seek help from God in every condition. Till a seeker obtains strength from God, he can do nothing. The strength for repentance is acquired after Istighfar. If there is no Istighfar, the faculty of repentance dies. Therefore, the need of perpetual Istighfar was recognized. ..Bring Taubah (repentance) to fruition by acts of obedience and good deeds ( Amal kay saat taubah ki takmil karo) (Malfuzat Vol 4 page 296 2022 Edition) .Taubah is not a feeling. It is a dynamic process of rectitude 

Allah gives the command plainly in Surah At Tahrim.

Ya ayyuhal lazina amanu tubu ilallahi taubatan nasuha: O ye who believe, turn to Allah in sincere repentance. It may be that your Lord will remove the evil consequences of your deeds and make you enter Gardens through which rivers flow, on the day when Allah will not abase the Prophet nor those who have believed with him (At-Tahrim 66:9).

The command is turn to Allah . Allah is the One who makes the turning back possible, and Islam holds that He is the one who turns toward His servant even before His servant turns toward Him. Among His names is At Tawwab, the Oft Returning, the One who repeatedly turns back to His servants in forgiveness.

The Prophet^(sa) said that Allah is more delighted with the repentance of His servant than a man who loses his camel in a waterless desert and then finds it standing beside him (Gardens of Righteous 15).

Read that again. The greater joy is not reserved for the one who never wandered. It belongs to the moment the wanderer is found.

Islam does not ask whether the returning servant is somehow superior to one who never sinned. It asks something gentler. It asks what the turning costs, and what it teaches. The one who has strayed and returned knows both roads. He knows what distance from Allah feels like, and he knows what it means to come back within reach of His mercy.

That knowledge becomes its own form of nearness.

And it is here that the Prophet^(sa) gives what may be the most beautiful description of taubah in the whole tradition, transmitted from Abu Huraira.^(ra)

Allah, the Exalted and Glorious, said: I am as My servant thinks of Me, and I am with him when he remembers Me. When he draws near to Me by the span of a hand, I draw near to him by the length of a cubit, and when he draws near to Me by a cubit, I draw near to him by the length of an outstretched arm. And when he comes to Me walking, I go to him running (Sahih al-Bukhari 7405).

Change direction . Take one small step  towards Him, and Allah does not wait for you to arrive. He comes the rest of the way, running.