Memories Are Erased but Love Remains

A husband shares the amazing real-life love story upon which the movie The Vow was based.

By Kim Carpenter, Farmington, New Mexico

As appeared in

•  share  tweet  +1 
• email
• print

“I’m not married,” she said. Not married? Then who was I, standing at my wife Krickitt’s hospital bedside since our car accident, praying during the three weeks she’d spent in a coma?

“No, Krickitt, you are married,” the rehabilitation nurse said gently. She asked again, “Who is your husband?”

My wife stared blankly. “I told you. I’m not married.”

But we were! We’d said vows before God and family, “till death do us part.” This felt almost worse than death.

We’d met just a year earlier when I called to order jackets for the college baseball team I coached, the New Mexico Highlands University Cowboys, and a cheerful sales rep with an unusual name answered. I was smitten.

Featured Product

The Vow

Can Kim and Krickitt find a way back to each other after a car wreck leaves Krickitt with no memory of their love?

I called Krickitt “to follow up on my order.” Eventually she gave me her home number in Anaheim, California.

Krickitt was actually a nickname her great-aunt gave her at age two, back in Phoenix, Arizona, because she kept hopping around. She hopped her way to becoming an Academic All-American gymnast in college.

Maybe what attracted me most was Krickitt’s faith. She wasn’t just a Sunday morning Christian. She saw God’s plan in every aspect of her life.

She told me a knee injury her senior year of college was a sign for her to quit gymnastics and help poor communities in Hungary on a church mission trip. Every day, she recorded her thoughts about God in a prayer journal.

I was a Christian, but I’d never had her passion. It scared me a little, fascinated me even more. I began to understand. God had brought us together.

She flew out to meet me and we hugged at the airport like old friends. That night we talked until the sun came up about faith, our lives, our dreams. Krickitt gave me a gift—a Bible, with my name embossed on the cover in gold lettering.

“Have you ever read the Book of Job?” she asked, turning to the story. “Life isn’t fair. Everybody has times when they feel like God’s just not there. But he’s always there, bringing you closer to him.”

She read the passage, and warm waves rippled through my body, as if her faithwere flowing into me.

I visited California, met her family and friends, even her pastor. That June I proposed, and we married in September, a large ceremony at Scottsdale Bible Church in Arizona.

FREE eBook

Paths to Happiness

Download a Free eBook filled with stories that show you how to transform life's challenges into opportunities!

 

“I promise to love and respect you fully,” I vowed, “to devote myself to your every need and desire. I promise to be the man you fell in love with. Thank you, Jesus, for the blessing you have provided me.”

Krickitt was driving us to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner that November when she swerved to avoid a slow-moving truck. Another truck hit us instead.

And now my wife had forgotten me. How did that fit into God’s plan? I stormed out of the recovery room and punched the wall. The pain barely registered. My heart hurt worse.