Again With The Future

Okay so this year has been pretty hard.  I submit evidence for your perusal:

• my husband was deployed to fight in Afghanistan
• I got pretty classic adjustment disorder after he left and almost quit school
• Step 1 board certification exam - enough said
• my husband got some injuries overseas, but not bad enough to send him home - I had to hear about these at work via Phone Calls that started with, "Hey, we need to talk now" instead of, "Do you have a second?"
• holidays by myself for the first time ever

I haven't said much (anything?) about my husband's deployment on here for several reasons.  The first is that deployment is difficult to talk about in a way that will reach others.  Unless you have experience with being in limited contact with your loved one for months at a time while he is (as far as you know) in mortal danger, you can't really know.  I didn't know.  The second is for what the military calls OPSEC - operational security.  You never know who's reading, and so the less information that is floating about, the better.  The third is quite simply that medicine is easy to talk about.  A year of solitary nights (broken by bouts of workaholism when the silence gets too overwhelming) is not.  He has been gone from my days this last year, yet he is inescapably present - an excruciating paradox.  I hate this limbo.  Anyway.  This year is finished and I don't mind.

Next year promises to teach me about uncertainty, which makes me itch.  I've never dealt much with uncertainty.  My whole life, I knew I wanted to be a doctor.  It was a vague plan that, as I got older, developed all the necessary steps. But I've completed all of those now.  Cue nausea.  I HAVE RUN OUT OF PLAN OH NOZ. 

Just like there's the quintessential first year conversation ("I'm so stressed I will never pass this test I hate my life") and a standard second year conversation ("I'm so stressed what are you doing for boards I hate my life"), there is one conversation that all third years have, constantly, until it's settled.  It revolves around what field to go into.  And for the first time I don't mind participating in the talk because we're finally talking about something constructive.  Sort of.

My dilemma is this: I want to do missions, possibly long-term.  But what field prepares me best for that?  The easiest answer is probably family practice - primary care, teaches you to deal with all types, good for developing relationships with people.  But.  The second tier of my problem is that modern suburban family practice makes me want to go back to retail while I frequently leave the ER singing.  So do I just do what I want?  Is that a good enough reason?  Here's why that last question is even worth asking: sometimes the Lord gives us honest desires as clues to what to do next; sometimes those desires are actually temptations (not from Him) and He asks us to walk away from them.  We have to wait for His guidance to be able to reliably tell the difference.

Six months ago this was not really a problem because I didn't need to make decisions yet, but my time cushion is running out because soon I need to start arranging my fourth year.  Fourth year for osteopathic students is mostly for audition rotations - you travel to the residency programs you really want to get into and rack up some face time.  Hopefully you impress the program with how smart and personable you are and help assure yourself of a spot there the next year.  Not to belabor my point, but I cannot start setting up audition rotations if I don't even know what field to look into. 

This is by no means a unique problem - I can list five classmates off the top of my head trying to make the same decisions - but I do think I have an edge.  Just because I don't know the plan doesn't mean my God doesn't have one.  And I know He will let me know, and I know it will be in enough time for me to make the right decisions.  I just get impatient sometimes.

Okay fine, I get impatient every day.  AT LEAST I'M HONEST.