I Was Accepted to Christendom's Grad School!

It started off like any normal day. I got up. I received a call that my godson's surgery went well. I prayed the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary while cooking breakfast. I ate. I ran errands. I picked up mom from work. I then went to spiritual direction.

I returned home from spiritual direction, upset that I had taken chalk but failed to get it blessed because my spiritual director and I got into an awesome conversation about saints. I opened up an Epiphany gift from a family friend. 

After gushing over the gift, I went down to the mailbox. I saw the mess the mailman left. I groaned. "Dude, c'mon. I know you and I don't like each other but why did you have to do this?" I looked at the overstuffed mailbox. There was something from our parish addressed to my mom. Lots of flyers from local stores. Hidden in the corner, a large manila envelope. "Huh. Did someone send me an Epiphany gift?"

I took the envelope out and looked at the address. "Notre Dame Graduate School of Christendom College." Surprise! I wasn't expecting to hear from either Christendom or Franciscan University of Steubenville (where I also applied to grad school) until next week at the earliest. I piled the rest of the contents of the mailbox on top of the mailboxes. There's only one thing I could do: find out the decision.

In a weird moment, I remembered the episode where Rory Gilmore was accepted to Harvard, Yale, etc. All those big packets in the Gilmore mailbox. "Thick packets usually means good news," I told myself. "No, I must wait to read it before I get too excited."

I turned the envelope around and proceeded to try to get it open. I struggled a bit, of course. I eventually get it open, taking out the thick packet carefully. It's a blue folder with a letter paper-clipped to it. I began reading:

"Dear Melissa," it said. "Congratulations! Your application..." I stopped reading and rushed to see where I could find the word "accepted." Ah, there it is on the second line; only it says "approved."

I jumped up and down in the mail room. "I gotta share this with mom! Oh, and the manager is probably watching me through the cameras -- and probably making fun of me since I'm acting like a child right now -- but I don't care." 

I gathered up all the mailbox contents and ran upstairs. I told my mom as soon as I opened the door, even before I stepped inside. She congratulated me. The next two minutes were a blur. Somewhere in there I shared the photo on Instagram. In the caption I added: "Best Epiphany gift ever!" It really is.

There were so many of you who prayed that I would get into either Christendom or Franciscan (still waiting to hear back from them as well) and I did! Thank you! I'll await Franciscan's decision before I make my final decision. There are a lot of factors that will go into the decision making (mostly financial)... but the fact that I now have an option to attend grad school in the fall is amazing. Seriously, thank you all who prayed for me! Once the excitement dies down a little I'll write a decent post. ;)

As always, thanks for reading (and praying!!) and God bless! :D