By Kent Cox
Two Fifteen Year Olds
Our story began more than fifty years ago when Cheryl and I were sophomores in high school. We were only fifteen years old.
We met through church, and both attended Del City High School. At an age when most relationships are remembered simply as teenage dating, ours became something much more significant. Cheryl was my first true girlfriend, and we became very close. We dated for approximately a year, perhaps a little longer.
Looking back from our lives today, it is easy to forget just how young we really were. We were teenagers still living under our parents’ authority, attending school and church, and depending upon adults to make many decisions for us. But we were also falling in love.
Our parents noticed how close we were becoming. They believed the relationship had become too serious, particularly for two teenagers. Eventually, they decided we needed to break up. It was not simply a suggestion that we date other people or spend less time together. The separation was enforced. We were to have no contact with each other. We were not even allowed to sit together at church. My mother went through my room, gathered the things Cheryl had given me, and returned them to Cheryl’s mother.
Around mid summer of 1974, our relationship was over; at least that was what the adults believed. There was something none of them initially knew. Cheryl was already pregnant, and I did not know it either.
The Note
One small piece of our relationship survived. On June 30, 1974, around the time we were being separated, Cheryl wrote me a handwritten note. She told me that even though our relationship was ending, there would always be a special place in her heart for me. She wrote about remembering the good times we had together and expressed the hope that perhaps someday God might bring us back together.
At the bottom she signed it:
Love, Cheryl
June 30, 1974
Neither of us could possibly have understood the significance those words would have nearly half a century later. Within weeks, the lives of those two teenagers would change dramatically.
Cheryl’s Secret
Cheryl suspected she might be pregnant before we were forced to break up. She believes she may have been approximately two months pregnant at the time. But she was fifteen years old, frightened, and unsure what to do. So, she kept it to herself. She did not tell her parents, and she did not tell me.
As the summer passed, the pregnancy progressed. By approximately the end of September, Cheryl could no longer deny what was happening. She was beginning to show and finally told her mother. Her mother took her to a doctor who confirmed the pregnancy. Cheryl remembers becoming hysterical when she heard the confirmation. She was given an injection to calm her, and her memories of the hours that followed became fragmented. Later that evening, she remembers several adults being at her house. She remembers asking for me, but I was not there. She was told I was not coming.
According to Cheryl’s recollection, the adults decided she would have an abortion. Neither Cheryl nor I participated in that decision, and we still were not permitted to communicate with one another. For Cheryl, that meant facing what came next essentially without the one person she desperately wanted to talk to. For me, something entirely different was happening. I still did not even know she was pregnant.
Kent Learns the Truth — But Only Part of It
A month or two after our forced breakup, my father picked me up from school. He told me we were going to Del State Bank. Once there, I was told to take the money I had in my savings account and give it to Cheryl’s mother to help pay for an abortion. That was how I learned Cheryl was pregnant.
There had been no conversation between Cheryl and me. I had not been told how far along she was and did not know what she wanted. I did not know what decisions had already been made. I knew almost nothing. I only knew the girl I had loved was pregnant, and an abortion was going to take place. Cheryl had asked to talk to me, but our parents would not permit the contact. I was disappointed and hurt that the adults, including my own parents, were making these decisions. But I was still a teenager living under my parents’ authority.
And so, while Cheryl was facing one of the most traumatic experiences of her young life, I was separated from her without knowing what she was actually going through. That distinction would become incredibly important 47 years later.
Texas
Within a few days of the pregnancy being confirmed, Cheryl’s mother and aunt took her to the Dallas/Fort Worth area where Cheryl recalls a late-term termination could be performed. She was taken to a medical facility and admitted. Then, her mother and aunt had to leave. Cheryl was fifteen years old, pregnant, frightened, and suddenly without her family. She remembers being placed in a room with another young girl. She did not understand exactly what was about to happen. An IV was started to induce labor.
Today, after having children of her own, Cheryl understands what was happening to her body. At fifteen, she did not. Labor began, and the contractions became closer together. Eventually, Cheryl delivered the first baby. Then she heard the doctor and nurse talking. The doctor discovered there was another baby. Cheryl was carrying twins. Until that moment, Cheryl had not known. Neither had I.
Coming Home
Later that evening, Cheryl was released. She was in significant pain and became very sick. After returning home, the bleeding became severe enough that her mother took her to an emergency room where Cheryl was admitted to the hospital. Her memories are incomplete because of how sick she became and the amount of blood she lost. She remembers drifting in and out of consciousness and remembers receiving what she believes was between three and five pints of blood. The physical consequences eventually subsided. The emotional consequences did not.
Cheryl missed almost the entire first semester of her junior year of high school. In her later handwritten testimony, she described the effect of the abortion very simply: it stole her confidence and many of the beliefs she had held about herself. Then, something happened that may be almost as significant to our story as the abortion itself.
Afterward, the subject of the abortion was never discussed again in either of our families. What had happened was simply left unspoken. A fifteen-year-old girl had discovered she was pregnant, been separated from the baby’s father, taken out of state, gone through induced labor, discovered she was carrying twins, suffered severe complications, and then returned to a world where the experience was essentially placed in a box and closed.
I was dealing with my own box. I knew an abortion had happened, but I did not know Cheryl’s story. I did not know exactly what she experienced in Texas. I did not know about the induced labor. I did not understand the medical complications or the emotional burden she would carry. We were not allowed to compare our stories and were not allowed to grieve together. We were not even allowed to talk, and then we simply disappeared from each other’s lives.
Forty-Seven Years
From the summer of 1974 until February 14, 2021, we never spoke. Not once. We did not call or write. There was no relationship hidden in the background and no occasional reunion. For 47 years, there was no contact.
Life continued. I eventually met and married Kelly. I told Kelly about Cheryl and the abortion while Kelly and I were dating. It was not something I had forgotten or hidden from my wife. Kelly and I went on to have a blessed marriage lasting 44 years. We had two children, and eventually nine grandchildren. Nothing about telling the story of Cheryl and me changes what my marriage to Kelly meant to me. Kelly and I built a life and family together that I remain profoundly grateful for.
Cheryl’s life took a different path. She married three times and had three children. Her first two marriages ended after relatively short periods. Her third marriage lasted approximately 36 years. Cheryl describes portions of that marriage as very difficult, including verbal and mental abuse and infidelity. Yet from the different chapters of her life came people she treasures: her three children and eight grandchildren. That matters greatly to both of us when telling this story.
We are not looking backward and asking, “What if?” What if our parents had not separated us? What if Cheryl had been allowed to continue the pregnancy? What if we had married as teenagers? There is no way to answer those questions, and doing so would diminish the families and people we love today. Our story is not about rewriting our lives. It is about what actually happened and what happened when two people carrying pieces of the same unfinished story finally found each other again.
Loss
Cheryl’s husband died in 2019 after suffering from emphysema. After his death, Cheryl began returning to church. Her handwritten account describes October 2019 as an important point in that journey. Then came 2020. The world was experiencing COVID, and my own world changed forever when Kelly died from COVID at only 62. After 44 years of marriage, that chapter of my life suddenly ended. We were now both widowed.
Neither of us knew what God — or life — had planned next. Cheryl’s spiritual journey, meanwhile, was becoming increasingly important to her. In January 2021, she describes reaching a point at the altar where she believed God was calling her to rededicate her life. Instead, she came to understand that she was giving her life to God for the first time. She describes herself afterward as forgiven and possessing a new heart.
Then, on February 13, 2021, Cheryl prayed. Her prayer was very specific. She asked God to bring a godly man into her life—someone who loved Jesus as much as she did and someone with whom she could share God’s Word and dinner.
Valentine’s Day 2021
The following day was Valentine’s Day. Cheryl opened Facebook to find a friend request. It was from me. But God…
It had been 47 years since we had spoken. Cheryl looked through my Facebook profile and discovered I was now a widower. She accepted the request. We began exchanging messages. Before long, I asked if I could call her. There was something I had wanted to discuss for decades: 1974.
My original reason for contacting Cheryl was not romance. It was healing. Years earlier, Cheryl’s brother had come into H-I-S, and I had asked about her. I told him I hoped that someday I could talk with Cheryl and tell her that I was sorry for my part in what happened with the pregnancy and abortion. Now that opportunity had unexpectedly arrived. When Cheryl and I finally spoke on the telephone, the conversation almost immediately returned to the place where our relationship had ended.
I wanted to know exactly what had happened. Cheryl wanted to know what I knew. What we discovered surprised both of us. For nearly half a century, each of us had carried our own version of the same event without knowing the other person’s experience. Cheryl was surprised by how little I had actually known, so she told me.
She told me the story I had never been allowed to hear when we were fifteen. I told her my story. I apologized to her and asked for her forgiveness. The two teenagers who had never been allowed to have that conversation were finally having it. They were simply 47 years older.
Something Neither Expected
I initially believed Cheryl and I might develop a casual friendship. That was not what happened. We talked. And talked. And talked. Because Cheryl lived in Ardmore, much of our early relationship developed through long telephone conversations. We became extraordinarily open with each other about our lives, our marriages, our mistakes, our faith, and our past. Then something began happening naturally. We started reading and studying the Bible together. Then we began praying together on the telephone every evening. Neither of us had planned this. The relationship developed remarkably quickly, yet there was something familiar underneath it. We had not spoken for 47 years, but the bond formed when we were fifteen had never completely disappeared. Five days after reconnecting, we met in Norman at Charleston’s for dinner. Afterward, we hugged goodbye in the parking lot. Cheryl remembers thinking, “Boy, am I in trouble.” She realized she had never stopped loving me.
On March 2, 2021, Cheryl showed me something she had kept all those years. It was something I had given her on June 30, 1974. A reminder of two teenagers who believed their relationship was ending forever. It spoke about a special place in the heart, remembering the good times, and the possibility that, perhaps, God might someday bring us back together. Forty-seven years after those words were written, we were reading them again. And this time, we were together.
Within months of reconnecting, we married. The fifteen-year-old boy and girl who had been ordered apart were now husband and wife. But God…
Marriage was not the end of this story, because we still had something from 1974 that needed healing.
Forgiven and Set Free
After we married, we began praying for a church home. Eventually, we were led to First Baptist Church in Newcastle. There we met Kathy Gaynor and Emily Freeman who told us about a ministry that would become extremely important in our lives. With Kathy’s guidance, Cheryl and I entered a twelve-week study through Hope Pregnancy Center called “Forgiven and Set Free.” The study caused us to open boxes we had kept closed for decades. Cheryl later described it as tough, but she also described God as good.
During approximately the third class, Cheryl told me something she had kept buried for years. There had been two other abortions during the early years of her third marriage. She had hidden those experiences and blocked them out. Telling me was difficult. Then, she told Kathy. My response became another important moment in our marriage. Instead of condemnation, I felt God had given me grace and compassion to love and support my wife.
When I married Cheryl, I believed we had become one. I had already embraced her three living children as my own. Now I began thinking differently about the children who had been lost. The twins Cheryl and I lost in 1974 were ours. Because Cheryl and I were now one, I chose — with Cheryl’s approval — to consider the other two babies part of our family as well.
The study changed how we thought about them. They were no longer simply an event called “the abortions.” For us, they were our children. They deserved names. They deserved to be remembered, and they deserved a memorial.
June 27, 2022
On June 27, 2022, we held a memorial service. I wrote a letter to God. I wrote about the four children. I wrote about the twins Cheryl and I had lost as teenagers and the extraordinary circumstances that had brought Cheryl and me together again decades later. I acknowledged something we both had carried. We needed healing and forgiveness — for ourselves, for one another and, according to our faith, from God. The memorial was not about pretending 1974 had never happened. It was the opposite. For decades, the experience had survived partly because it was never spoken about. Now we were speaking. We were remembering. We were grieving. And we were placing what happened within our Christian belief that forgiveness was possible. I wrote about things I had never been able to say to the twins. That I was sorry. That we had not chosen what happened to them. That I wished I could have held them and made them feel loved. And that someday, according to our faith, I hoped to see them in heaven. The service gave names to something that had remained nameless for almost half a century. But God…
What “But God” Means to Us
It would be easy to summarize our story in one sentence:
High-school sweethearts reunite after 47 years and get married.
That is true. But it is not really our story. Our story is about two fifteen year olds who loved one another and were separated. It is about a frightened teenage girl who endured something she did not understand and then carried it largely in silence. It is about a teenage boy who knew just enough about what happened to carry guilt and regret, but not enough to understand what the girl he loved had actually experienced. It is about two people who went on to live entire lives without each other. We married other people. We had children. We had grandchildren. We experienced happiness and pain. We became widowed.
Then, after 47 years of complete silence, a Facebook friend request appeared on Valentine’s Day. By every reasonable expectation, that should have been the end of our story. But God…
Forty-seven years later, He brought us back into each other’s lives — not simply to rekindle a love that began when we were teenagers, but to bring us back to a place of pain we had each carried for nearly half a century. The first thing that brought us back together was not romance. It was a need to talk about the thing we had never been permitted to talk about: 1974.
That conversation brought forgiveness. Forgiveness opened the door to friendship. Friendship became love. Love became marriage, and marriage eventually gave us the strength to return once more to the place where our story had been broken. This time, however, we did not return there as two frightened fifteen year olds. We went back together.
We cannot change 1974. We cannot rewrite the lives we lived during those 47 years, nor would we want to erase the families and people God gave us during those years. What we can tell is the story of what happened next.
Forgiveness where there had been guilt.
Healing where there had been pain.
Restoration where there had once been separation.
Our story is not really about what might have been. It is about what God can do with what has been.
But God.