The Vow

  Copyright © 2012 by Kim and Krickitt Carpenter

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  978-1-4336-7579-9

  Published by B&H Publishing Group

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Dewey Decimal Classification: 616

  Subject Heading: BIOGRAPHY

  Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 • 16 15 14 13 12

  DEDICATION

  For keeping our circle of life revolving full of love and support, to our families we say thank you. Without our parents, siblings, in-laws, and children, our drive to continue on would have been greatly weakened. To our friends who have nurtured, supported, and loved us unconditionally we are forever grateful. To our children Danny and LeeAnn, we are blessed to be the parents of such great kids. Remember to always do the right thing, give it everything you’ve got, and know that your parents will always love you and will be there for you. To our Lord Jesus Christ, you continue to shelter us, grant us grace, and bless us with peace, and you never ever turned away even when we sinned. Not a word can be spoken to the sacrifice you gave for us. For that we have eternal life and our love will never be forsaken.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1: Boy Meets Girl

  2: In the Blink of an Eye

  3: A Modern-Day Miracle

  4: Lesson in Heartbreak

  5: Moving Along

  6: A New Reality

  7: Second Chances

  8: Global Impact

  9: A Family of Hope

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  December 1993

  Krickitt,” her therapist began in a soothing voice, “do you know where you are?”

  Krickitt thought for a moment before replying, “Phoenix.”

  “That’s right, Krickitt. Do you know what year it is?”

  “1965.”

  She was born in 1969, I thought, somewhat frantically. That’s just a little setback—nothing to really worry about, I tried to convince myself.

  “Who’s the president, Krickitt?”

  “Nixon.”

  Well, he was the president when she was born, I justified.

  “Krickitt, what’s your mother’s name?” the therapist continued.

  “Mary,” she said with no hesitation . . . and no expression. Now we’re getting somewhere. Thank you, God!

  “Excellent, Krickitt. And what’s your father’s name?”

  “Gus.”

  “That’s right. Very good.” He paused before continuing, “Krickitt, who’s your husband?”

  Krickitt looked at me with eyes void of expression. She looked back at the therapist without answering.

  “Krickitt, who’s your husband?”

  Krickitt looked at me again and back at the therapist. I was sure everyone could hear my heart thudding as I waited for my wife’s answer in silence and desperation.

  “I’m not married.”

  No! God, please!

  The therapist tried again, “No, Krickitt, you are married. Who’s your husband?”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Todd?” she questioned.

  Her old boyfriend from California? Help her remember, God!

  “Krickitt, please think. Who’s your husband?”

  “I told you. I’m not married.”

  1

  BOY MEETS GIRL

  Good morning, and thanks for calling Jammin Sportswear. This is Krickitt.”

  When I called Jammin that fall morning in 1992, I had expected to be greeted by a bored-sounding customer service rep that would rather have been spending her morning doing anything other than answering a phone. But what I got was quite the opposite. When Krickitt said, “Good morning,” it sounded like she meant it. And she even sounded like a cricket, all chirpy and upbeat.

  “Hi, Krickitt,” I answered her, “I’m Coach Kim Carpenter from New Mexico Highlands University. I’m calling about the baseball coaches’ jackets in your catalog.”

  I have loved baseball from the time I was a little kid. I could always see myself coaching someday, just like my dad, so when I got my first coaching job with the Highlands Cowboys in Las Vegas, New Mexico, it was a dream come true. But even dreams have their mundane moments, and so I found myself ordering jackets for my assistant coaches and myself.

  That first conversation with Krickitt was in no way the stuff movies are made of, but even so, as we discussed prices and colors, I got more and more interested in this telephone salesperson with the unique name. She was so refreshingly friendly and helpful that I couldn’t help feeling like my day was better just from having spoken to her.

  Our conversation ended, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this girl named Krickitt. There was just something different and special about her voice and personality that I really couldn’t explain. I could tell this wasn’t just a job for her, it was more like a mission. It was as if she had decided to be the friendliest, most helpful person her customers talked to every day. If that was the case, then she was a roaring success in my mind.

  I decided to call again a few days later to follow up on the order. “Good morning, and thanks for calling Jammin. This is Keri.” Hmm . . . Keri. Not the voice I wanted to hear. I quickly had to face the fact that I was calling for a reason other than just checking up on those jackets. Keri sounded like a nice woman, but the fact was that I wanted to talk to Krickitt. I had to make it happen, so I thought fast.

  “Hi Keri, I’m following up on an order with Krickitt.”

  “Just a minute.” I could feel my heart racing as I waited.

  “Hi, this is Krickitt. What can I do for you today?”

  “Hi, Krickitt. This is Coach Carpenter from Highlands University. I called about a jacket the other day.”

  As Krickitt looked up my information, I had a few seconds to think. What was it about this Krickitt person that all of a sudden made me feel like I was a nervous, lovesick teenager? She was just a sales rep doing her job, and she was in California, not New Mexico, where I was. I pushed those thoughts aside as I asked her for some color samples before ending the conversation.

  When the samples arrived, I spread them out on a table. My thoughts started going in unexpected directions. Did she pick out these colors herself? Had she held the samples in her hands? Whoa, there! Settle down! I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me, or why it was happening. I was a grown man, after all!

  I put those thoughts from my mind, yet I was unusually eager to talk to a certain telephone sales rep when I called again to order a purple and gray jacket. “Good morning, and thanks for calling Jammin. This is Krickitt.” Success!

  “Hi, Krickitt, it’s Coach Carpenter. I . . .”

  “Coach Carpenter!” She interrupted with a sense of excitement that surprised me, since she knew I was going to be ordering a grand total of one jacket from her. “It’s great to hear from you again.”

  I wondered what she thought was “great” about it. Was it the prospect of another order, or was it because it was me? I tried to determine if I could sense more than a professional friendliness in the sound of that voice I couldn’t get out of my head.

  Unsurprisingly, I ordered the jacket. Then I ordered another one in a different style. When it arrived, it was so popular amongst the staff that every coach on the team wanted one, so I ordered some more.

  A few months had passed since that first conversation with my favorite sal
esperson, and by now we spent a lot more time just talking to each other than actually conducting business. Then one day at the end of a call, Krickitt mentioned she wouldn’t be working on the day I had been planning to call to check on an order, so she gave me her home number.

  After that I started calling Krickitt at her apartment, and before long we stopped pretending the calls were about athletic clothing and spent the time getting to know each other. We often talked for more than an hour. No matter how long we talked, we never wanted to hang up the phone, even when my phone bill rocketed up from almost nothing to $500 a month. Those were the days before e-mail and texting, and few people even had cell phones. Krickitt and I were tied to land lines, but I didn’t care about the inconvenience or the expense. She was more than worth it.

  I finally found out the story behind Krickitt’s unique name. Her given name was Krisxan (pronounced “Kris-Ann”), a name that reflected her Greek ancestry. The nickname Krickitt was coined when her great-aunt declared the two-year-old Krisxan could never sit still and hopped around all the time like a cricket.

  It was no surprise to anyone that Krickitt was energetic and athletic. Her dad had once coached high school basketball and baseball. Her mother coached gymnastics, which Krickitt had taken a liking to from the time she was old enough to make her way down a balance beam. In fact, she learned how to do a back handspring before she knew how to write her name.

  I thought I was a sports fanatic, but Krickitt put me to shame. From kindergarten on, she practiced gymnastics every day after school in her mom’s gym, and she put in five hours a day during the summers. At sixteen, she tore the rotator cuff in her right shoulder, but her orthopedic surgeon told her an operation would probably kill her chances for a college scholarship. So she suffered through and just kept at it, excelling in floor exercises and the balance beam. She didn’t let a little pain stop her.

  It was no surprise that Krickitt got multiple scholarship offers from schools with reputable gymnastics programs. She ended up choosing California State University at Fullerton, which had offered her a full gymnastics scholarship. She was a two-time Academic All-American there before giving up competition after she tore her Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) during her senior year.

  Though many of our initial conversations were about sports, Krickitt wasted no time getting to the spiritual part of our relationship. A few months into our friendship, she wrote this: “You said I can ask you anything, so I must be honest, Kimmer. You know that I am a Christian. Being a Christian is having an ongoing intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. I guess what I have been wondering this whole time is if you were a Christian too—if you had made the decision to ask Christ into your life to pay the penalty of your sin, and give you eternal life like he has promised if we ask.”

  Her faith was her life, and no matter what else she thought about me, she had to have a peace about my spiritual side before she could have any sort of relationship with me. As we talked through this part of our lives, we learned we were both Christians and had discovered Christ at the same age, but from that point our spiritual journeys had gone in different directions.

  I was fourteen years old when I first learned about Jesus while at a friend’s house. When I heard that Christ had died for me so my sins could be forgiven, it was the most awesome news I’d ever heard. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my parents about it. But when I started telling them what I felt, it didn’t click with them at all.

  My parents were nominal churchgoers, but I don’t think they had ever felt what I was feeling at that moment. We had never gone to mass regularly, although Grandma Helen took us when she had the chance. As a family we never talked about religion. But the message of Christ had touched me. It wasn’t a quick process, but in time I came to fully trust and follow Jesus as my Savior.

  Krickitt learned about Jesus from a little booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws. Its message filled her with excitement and curiosity, and she decided then and there that she would commit her life to following Christ. But no one else knew she made that life-altering decision on that day. She didn’t even totally know, at the time, what that decision would mean for her life and for eternity. She didn’t confirm her decision with anyone and didn’t get involved in church programs at the time. When she started college, she finally got involved in a church, the Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton. While there her spiritual life transformed through the teachings of Pastor Charles Swindoll and College Pastor Steve McCracken.

  During the summer of 1991, Steve led a mission trip to Hungary. Since Krickitt had just blown out her knee, she suddenly had time on her hands after years of daily workouts. When she heard about the Hungary trip, she saw it as a God-given opportunity to pour all the time and energy she had always put into gymnastics into something else. So she and her friend (and later roommate) Megan Almquist took on the challenge of being missionaries for nine weeks that summer. They had the incredible opportunity of spending time with and talking to people who were starved for Jesus’ message of hope after generations of religious oppression.

  I thought I was pretty faithful, but when I saw how Krickitt lived her life I was amazed. She had incorporated her faith into every part of her life. She wasn’t a Christian just on Sunday mornings; being a Christian was the core of who she was. And I adored that about her.

  My conversations with Krickitt kept getting longer and more involved. We also started writing letters back and forth. The letters were like the phone calls—we sent short cards at first but it wasn’t long before Krickitt was writing me ten pages at a time. I can only imagine the length and number of e-mails we would have exchanged if we’d had that option in those days.

  As is the case in any fledgling relationship, it was inevitable that we would eventually talk about the idea of swapping pictures of ourselves, and early in the spring of 1993 we decided it was time to take that step. We couldn’t send photos at the click of a mouse back then; instead we were looking at a long, nerve-wracking process of waiting for the mail to arrive each day. I mailed Krickitt a Highlands Cowboys media guide with my picture in it. Then I waited impatiently for a photo that would put a face to the amazing girl I had gotten to know so well over the past few months. I tried to convince myself I was just interested in her heart and her spirit; but at the same time, I figured it couldn’t hurt if she also happened to be beautiful.

  When the envelope from Krickitt arrived a few days later, I ripped it open and took my first look at a woman with dark hair, shining blue eyes, and a fantastic smile. I thought she was absolutely gorgeous.

  However, it was obvious there had been another person in the picture, as I could see an arm around Krickitt’s shoulder. Who had she cut out of the photo? Was it her boyfriend? Another “special friend” like me? My heart plummeted as I considered that option. Take it easy, man, I chided myself. You’re getting way ahead of yourself.

  I was dying to call Krickitt to see if she’d gotten my picture that day too, but I was a bit nervous about how she might respond. That night I called to ask. “Got it!” she answered. I didn’t want to ask what she thought, so I just waited to see if she’d tell me. She did. “And you know, I thought, This guy is even cute.” We both laughed. I had been afraid the conversation would be tense and awkward, but thankfully it wasn’t.

  I mentioned that I had noticed she had cropped someone out of the picture she sent me. “Yeah,” she responded. Again I waited, halfway dreading what I might hear. “I cut my girlfriends out because they’re beautiful!”

  We both knew what the next step would be: meeting in person. This would be a vitally important step in our relationship. After all, how do you know you truly connect with someone until you’ve physically spent time with him or her? So in February of 1993, Krickitt and I started talking about the prospect of meeting and spending some time together, short though a trip might be due to our work schedules. By that poin
t we were talking more than five hours a week, and I figured a plane ticket wouldn’t cost much more than what I was spending on phone bills. So I asked Krickitt if she’d like to come to Las Vegas and see my team play a few games. She said she didn’t know. Before she decided, she would have to think and pray about it.

  And she did think and pray. Years later, when Krickitt allowed me to read her journal from that time, I saw the evidence of it. One entry reads: “Lord, I really need your wisdom and Spirit to guide me with Kimmer. . . . Part of me wants to meet him—I think it would be fun. Part of me doesn’t because I don’t want to begin to have feelings for him if this is not of you. If it is, I pray you would show me that. I want to be led by you. I see so many ways in which we relate, but you must be the center.”

  Eventually, Krickitt leveled with me about her concerns in a lengthy letter. In a nutshell, she wanted to make sure we had no unrealistic expectations about the visit. She made it clear that at that point we were just friends. Her other concern was she didn’t want to jeopardize my reputation in any way. As a coach and role model, I had a lot to lose if the situation looked to be something other than what it was—two friends meeting each other.

  After two months of talking about it, Krickitt made the decision to come to New Mexico so we could meet face-to-face. In preparation for her arrival, I reserved a room at a hotel for her near my apartment. I fully respected that Krickitt was saving herself for her husband one day. I realized that since I had fallen short, I would have to be upfront with her about my past, knowing that it would disappoint her. I knew also how important this was and I wanted to make sure that it was quite clear to anyone who might be watching that we were not spending the night together.

  I made the two-hour trip to Albuquerque to pick her up at the airport. In those pre-9/11 days there were no restrictions on who could go through the security checkpoints at airports, so I was able to meet her at the gate. I spotted her the second she emerged from the jetway. I had seen her picture, so I knew who to look for, but I think I could have picked her out of the crowd even if I hadn’t known what she looked like. I felt we had so much in common and had such a wonderful friendship already. Even though I already knew she was very attractive, when I finally saw her in the flesh I could hardly believe how beautiful she was. After all those hours on the phone, I finally had a real live person to match with that amazing voice.