College Admissions Essay: Mind And Soul

Mercy is the great gift to sinners, the refuge God offers from a life of anger and emptiness. It isn't definable so much in words as it is in a feeling: a great weightlessness suddenly captivating the heart, mind, and soul of one of God's children as she shakes off the chains of death and embraces true freedom. Mercy is the only hope of man, so consumed as we are with our own sin and suffering. I know in my own life I've experienced the pain of emptiness; I've felt as though God was surely gone and life was simply a cruel joke of the universe as humanity trudged on towards the void of death. To realize the depth of my misunderstanding was to feel a personal shame incomparable with any previously experienced guilt. To realize the depth of God's

Subject to bullying during my middle school years, I remember coming into high school ready to reinvent myself; I would find a crowd that accepted me, even slightly, and bend myself to their will until I felt I truly belonged. It was Freshman year that I met my pessimistic and often cruel band of friends. Listening to these people, I somehow came to believe that adolescents with no true experiences of the world were some kind of authority on how to overcome the injustices of the twenty-first century. I came to fancy myself a feminist, one without limits, willing to do whatever it took to gain

I gave him my life, my weakness, my sin. I sprinted towards confession and felt unfathomable sorrow. And following that, I felt a supreme, and permanent joy, and changed who I was. The timeline of my life had split. God came to me at my weakest; he came to me when I was full of sin, not even sure I believed in Him. He showed me, then, the value of life, the dignity of people, how rare and precious every person is simply because they exist, because He created them. He gave me faith and hope and love, and asked of me something even greater: to discern religious life. The grace He's poured out to me since that day, February 14, 2014, has filled me with love, to the point where I can't imagine a life without Him. I will forever be grateful for His mercy. He died for me, and when I couldn't grasp that, He pursued me until I couldn't stay away. He took the lowest of the low and swept her off her feet. He's given me much more than I ever thought to ask for. That, to me, is the essence of