Thoughts on a cool October evening

I'm struggling through depression at the moment. The impact of quitting The Firm and having to go back to a "real" job continues to reverberate in my life. Today I had to go perform a clinical audit. The doctor at this site is the same age as myself - the comparisons are inevitable. One begins to feel a failure, then the crushing weight of worrying about debt, then questioning whether one has truly understood the will of God.

Am I entering another one of those phases which approximates a middle age crisis? When one takes stock of one's life, realizes that many of the dreams one has will never get done, and begins to feel the cold walls of reality close in? Perhaps I understand a bit why men and women suddenly go off the deep end - it's a grasp of trying to deny the way things are, to get at the way we think things should be.

I took my job with much prayer and gratitude - yet only one month in, it feels like such a burden. The commute, the work, the missing time with my family...I begin to question "Did I pray enough? Did I seek God's will enough? Should I have held out just a little longer for The FIRM(Forgetting, of course, my mental and fiscal anguish at the end)?

Perhaps I need to take refuge in the fact that our lives, like the seasons, sometimes enter times of decay and death, but like winter to spring, will be renewed, as Captain Nemo (James Mason) says in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, "In God's good time".