Mary Annette Gailey had worked at a day-care center, in retail food management, customer service, and with computers. Then, drawing inspiration from her father, who had worked in a Mack Truck engine plant, she became an over-the-road tractor-trailer driver. It was here she also received a call to become a religious sister. After several years of discernment, Gailey, 38, recently made her final vows with Pennsylvania’s Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

Gailey frequently drove in silence to take better advantage of the contemplative side of her solitary hours on the road, which lent themselves to listening to God and sorting out the direction her life was taking. Driving a truck “allowed me to listen to the Holy Spirit,” she told the Associated Press. “It was a metaphoric journey being played out.”

“I was spending time in solitude, with just the Holy Spirit, and God spoke to me,” she said. “It’s definitely not like people picking up the phone and someone calls you . . . . There’s no lightning bolt. It’s much like a quiet whisper and listening to your own heart.

Her discernment process included attending come-and-see events, keeping a journal, meeting regularly with a vocation director, and living as an affiliated member of the Holy Family Sisters. For a while she spent one week living as a layperson, and another as if she were to be part of religious life. Her experience living as a religious gave her greater peace. “Someone said to me, ‘Go where the peace is,’ ” she said. “When you find the deepest peace, you know it’s true.”

“God never stops calling,” she says “When do we finally listen?”