BOWLING GREEN—As a December graduate of Bowling Green State University, I won’t be hunting down the perfect dream job like my peers. Instead, I’ll be happily preparing for my marriage — to Christ as a contemplative nun.  

It’s been quite a journey to come to this point and one I certainly never expected when I started college.  I love going new places, meeting new people and writing so when I found I could combine these as a reporter, I had thought journalism would be a great career for me.

However, it wasn’t long into my freshman year when I started meeting students who were choosing to pursue religious vocations, and God started to tug at my heart. But the idea of having a religious vocation myself scared me, and I pictured myself in a cloister, feeling depressed and wanting to be out.

By sophomore year, I sensed a stronger call to dedicate myself to serving the church. I was then encouraged to take prayer more seriously and devote at least 15 minutes to prayer each day.

As I started to visit the Blessed Sacrament chapel daily, that 15 minutes soon turned into a half-hour, and then to an hour, and I began to look forward to my “dates with Jesus.” The more time I spent with Christ in prayer, the more I wanted to be with Him, and the more He helped me see the good of religious life.

I traveled to Washington, D.C., in the summer before my senior year to work for the Catholic News Service (CNS) as an intern reporter. I loved the work and had dreams of staying with CNS and reporting from its Rome bureau.

I also went on two silent retreats that summer and began to be drawn to continually live the quiet, contemplative life. It seemed even though working for CNS would be a perfect fit, God was calling me to something more.

When I came back for my senior year, I started visiting cloistered monasteries and immediately knew the life of a contemplative sister was what I had been desiring. My heart was filled with joy and peace, and I felt like I fit naturally into this silent, prayerful life.  

After visiting two orders, I visited the Carmelite monastery near Grand Rapids, Mich., and by the end of my second visit, I knew this was where God had prepared me to live with Him. I felt God telling me my vocation is to be alone with Him “on the mountain” and to intercede for the needs of the world — the Carmelite charism.  

And even though the idea of being cloistered behind the grilles was still a bit scary at first — I could sense Jesus telling me He would be there for me. By the end of the week, I felt I was given the grace to live the Carmelite life with love and perseverance and was thanking God for the gift of my vocation.  He had captured my heart!

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Editor’s note: Like many young women pursuing vocations, Ms. Slivka must repay several thousand in college loans because her order requires her to enter free of debt.  

If you would like to sponsor her efforts to enter religious life, please mail your sponsorship contribution to Ms. Slivka at: St. Thomas More University Parish, 425 Thurstin Ave., Bowling Green, OH, 43402 or call 419-352-7555.