Change the Difficulty Option in Game to Be Selectable from a List

I recently encountered an issue in which I needed to change my difficulty to hard to have a 100% of zombifying a villager for a villager hall. I normally play in normal mode without cheats on but as changing the difficulty doesn't require cheats this would be no issue. However, I realized that in order to go back to normal after changing it to hard I would have to go through peaceful first and as the game updates as you change that setting while you are still in the menu, my zombie would despawn, causing me to have to go find another. I just think it would be helpful if Mojang added some sort of dropdown menu similar to what is in Bedrock. Another option would be to make the game difficulty not update until you resume the game.