The Match, Depression, and following where God leads

Every third Thursday in March fourth year medical students find out where, after four years of hard work, they will be doing their residency. You see four years of medical school is only the beginning of training for a young doctor. Everyone must do a residency in a field, mostly of their choosing. My wife and I both applied to 15 med-peds programs and went on about half that many interviews. We are not the most competitive in terms of grades and board scores, but certainly in the middle of the pack. Our main goal was to stay in the southeast and be somewhat close to family.

We decided, after much thought and deliberation, we would like to stay in Memphis, with family only ~4 hours away. We  thought UT had a great program, we got along great with the residents here, we felt like we could learn a lot from our attending physicians here, and believe it or not after four years Memphis began to feel like home. We submitted our rank list and put UT Memphis at the top.

For those that don't know, applicants submit a rank list of programs they would like to go to and have presumably interviewed at. Residency programs submit a rank list of applicants they would like to have in their program. Later, after an obscene amount of waiting, a giant computer algorithm tells everybody where they will be going. 

Back to Match Day. Despite our interviews going well, despite many people from within and without the program telling us we were shoe-ins, despite feeling like maybe God had brought us to Memphis for a reason, we did not match at UT. All around us amidst many of our classmates either feeling joyous or disappointed, we were shocked. We would be moving half way across the country to Eastern (North) Carolina. Away from our church family of 4 years, further away from our family. We will now have to sell (or rent) our house, pack up our bags and move.

After Match Day my wife's family came in town to hang out for awhile. It was nice having them in town; we don't get to see them very often, but we were still depressed about what happened. Unfortunately when I'm stressed or depressed about something I tend to internalize it and it seems to go straight to my gut. Only after about a week did I realize over the course of my education I have never gotten my first "choice". I wanted to stay at CHS to play soccer, but a new high school opened up and I had to go there. God had other plans. I wanted to go to Vanderbilt, but because of my parents' divorce we couldn't afford it. God had other plans. I ended up going to Lipscomb and couldn't imagine it any other way. I wanted to stay in Nashville and go to Meharry or Vandy, again that didn't work out. God had other plans; and my education at UT memphis has been excellent. 

It seems God is trying to tell me something about making my own plans.

Sola fide,