…You mentioned God. He is very much aware of your situation and He loves you VERY much. He has a plan for you. Have faith in that. Having faith in Him means having faith in His timing. Everything will fall into place and when it all clicks you will have this epiphone -- "so THAT'S why I had to go through all that!" You will have far more empathy and patience and kindness now for having gone through this. I think it definitely makes us better docs. Blessings to you and yours.
Another amazing post. I'm sorry that you haven't had the luck that I was hoping for on your behalf. Like you I believe there's a plan for all of us that we are often not fully aware of, but God is and he will see it through. It is tough to have faith in that all the time but it's the truth.
My entire journey has been marked by those tender mercies, including the SOAP process and the way I stumbled into my spot yesterday.
I was never a likely candidate for medical school in the first place. Grades, lack of connections in medicine etc. But before college I went through a very serious trial related to something I thought I was supposed to do. This was to be a defining part of my life, or so I was told by friends, family, and clergy. I started out with this endeavor only to have it fall apart almost immediately. I returned home to my family feeling utter shame, having let them down. I became horribly depressed and even had some thoughts of suicide for a time.
Thing is, preparing for this endeavor actually gave me the opportunity to learn a certain skill that opened up a volunteer experience in college (that I was otherwise completely unqualified for). That experience cracked open the door for me into medical school (was the main focus of the one interview I got).
Medical school went smoothly and I should absolutely have matched without problem. I had above average scores, class rank, and letters for my field. I never failed anything, never had any gaps in training etc. On one interview, when I stepped out of the residency office to change before the flight home, my wife was on the other side of the door and heard the faculty and PD gushing about how much they had hoped I would come to the interview and how impressed they were with me, and this was a place that only interviewed one person at a time and only 2 per week, I placed that program #2 on my rank list and didn't match.
In the SOAP, every single of the 12 or 13 programs that I had the time to speak with told me they couldn't see why I hadn't matched and that I could rest assured that I would be getting a first round offer. One program, that had only one opening decided to put me #2 on their list, but called Wednesday morning telling me they wrestled all night with what to do and that their #1 was indistinguishable from me. They were in close contact during the first round asking me not to accept any offers until they heard if their spot would be rejected because they wanted the opportunity to give it to me in the second round if it was. I don't say that to make anyone jealous or to brag, just to point out that this SOAP thing was part of the process that I believe God has in place for me as I'll outline below.
So flash forward to the program I did take. This was a program that despite my application and scores, I didn't feel I had any business thinking about, much less applying to. They called me up and the interview process went forward. They seemed so impressed with that skill I had developed after highschool that they wanted to talk to me. By Tuesday afternoon they had contacted me multiple other times, and I got a first round offer. All due in large part to that same difficult experience I had as a young adult over 15 years ago that I thought had ruined my life as I knew it.
I can only continue to look for what God has in store for me next in this process. I sort of doubt that it will even have all that much to do with medicine but rather that I'll be put in a place to do something for someone or make a difference somehow because of this path I've been set on.
I sincerely believe that everyone here has a similar situation, these types of things happen for a reason, I have no doubt of that. So please don't think less of yourselves for this, things have a way of working out when we put our trust in the idea that they will. Even if medicine isn't in the cards for some of us (and I say us because I'm with you folks matched and unmatched alike), we had to learn it for some yet unseen reason that will hopefully become apparent someday.
I sincerely hope everybody gets something....we all deserve top notch places 
