Eight years ago, Nicole Habashy sat in her high school honors English class passing notes to a guy one seat away. She didn’t know it then, but the person who sat between her and her crush was her future best friend. Kristin Kennalley was quiet and Habashy was loud. Habashy introduced herself and invited Kennalley to a party at her sister’s house. After talking at the party, the two clicked. Neither woman ever expected their friendship to lead to a shared passion for religious life.

Habashy, Wichita junior, says that when she and Kennalley first became friends, neither thought they would enter the religious life. Both were rebellious teens with other plans for the future. Habashy thought one day she would be a CEO and Kennalley wanted to teach physics.

“Kristen thought about being a nun first, and then I saw how happy and peaceful she was and that helped me with my decision,” Habashy says.

Kennalley, Wichita senior, first thought about becoming a nun when she was in fourth grade. Then, after attending a Catholic college for two years, she transferred to the University of Kansas to experience life outside of Catholic schools. She also studied in Rome, where her desire to become a nun became more assured. “The more I get to know myself, the more I see it as a desire in my heart,” Kennalley says.

Habashy says she didn’t think about becoming a nun until later in life. When she was little, she always saw herself getting married and having 12 children. “Big families always seemed more fun than smaller families,” Habashy says. “They can entertain themselves.” But by becoming a nun, Habashy realizes she will be able to touch more lives than she would with a family of her own.

Habashy says her time at KU has strengthened her desire to become a nun. She’s learned from the sisters at the St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center, 1631 Crescent Rd., that nuns are regular people with their own struggles. Habashy, like other nuns before they took their vows, has gone on dates, but says nothing ever worked out the way she thought it would. “My biggest complaint was I didn’t think anyone could reciprocate the intensity of my affection,” she says.

Father Zachary, a priest at St. Lawrence, says there’s something special about Habashy and Kennalley. He says most women on campus would never have thought of becoming a nun, let alone taken the steps to visit a religious community. He believes what they are doing is counter-cultural and that their support for each other is what helps them through their journey in faith. “The hardest part for them is going to be to keep looking forward and to not get distracted by well-meaning people,” he says.

Together, Habashy and Kennalley have visited religious orders in New York and other places around the country, and each woman is looking for an order to fit her own personality. There are things that they’re going to have to give up when they become nuns and join their separate orders, but their friendship is not one of them. Kennalley jokingly says she will miss her iPod and Habashy will have to give up smoking cigarettes. Both agree that giving up men and marriage will be difficult.

Kennalley says her experience in Rome helped ease her fears of leaving her friends and family. “I don’t have anything to lose, just everything to gain,” she says.

For Habashy, Kennalley’s experience also proved to her that their friendship would last forever. Habashy says that the two only talked twice while Kennalley was in Rome, but she felt closer to her because she knew they had an unspoken bond.

“They have a deeper friendship; it’s a spiritual one,” Father Zachary says.

As for their families, the women say they are slowly coming to terms with their decisions. “My parents are starting to realize that I’m serious about this decision, but it will take time for them to come around,” Habashy says. Kennalley says her parents became very supportive of her after they saw how happy she was in Rome.

Habashy and Kennalley will soon give up going on dates and passing notes to guys, but they say they’ll never give up their friendship. “It helps to have a friend like Nicole to talk to who understands what I’m going through,” Kennalley says.