Reece’s Rainbow Report #67: Kruse Family

After all, she was an experienced mother of seven children, and Rusty had been an Army medic for well over two decades, with all the instability the military lifestyle brings. Surely she could survive an hour in a Ukrainian apartment with only a malnourished six-year-old fresh out of an orphanage, right? 

Stasik, just 19 pounds and covered in lanugo hair, a sign of starvation, could not walk or talk. But there were a few things he could do quite well, including scream at the top of his tiny lungs and beat himself senseless.

“I had never seen children behave the way he was behaving, and I had no warning,” says Kristin, a 54-year-old stay-at-home mother. “Stasik has meltdowns where he’ll just start screaming and hurting himself, pinching and biting himself, beating his head on the wall or floor. When I saw him do that for the first time, my mouth just fell open. I was horrified, like what am I going to do?” 

The Alabama mother knows now: make sure Stasik is wearing braces on his arms and a padded helmet on his head. Then pick him up, hold his arms and speak softly to the youngest Kruse, now age nine. 

“He still has meltdowns like he had in the apartment, but it doesn’t terrify me now,” Kristin says. “I can calm him now so the meltdown comes to a stop.” 

Chalk it up as another lesson learned in her PhD in Stasik studies. Kristin and Rusty know how to rock their adopted son just right in the rocking chair, wrap him like a burrito in his baby blanket, push him just so on his swing and sing his favorite songs at just the right times. 

“Stasik loves having a mom and a dad,” Kristin says. “He’s very attached to Rusty and me, and he loves his brothers and sisters. He’s mean to them, but if they leave the room he cries, because he doesn’t want them to leave.” 

It’s an attachment that got its start long before Stasik was born in Ukraine. Kristin learned about children languishing in Russian orphanages when her fifth child was a baby. As she rocked her daughter to sleep every night, the thought that so many others just like her were instead alone and afraid broke her heart. 

Then Kristin, also an Army veteran, found Reece’s Rainbow. She signed up to be a Prayer Warrior for a young girl code-named Nadine. Kristin prayed regularly for a family to step forward, secretly wishing it could be theirs. 

Finally, Rusty said yes; they could commit to adopting Nadine. But it heartbreakingly wasn’t meant to be — a Russian family stepped forward first (ultimately, Nadine’s adoption never happened). Rusty told Kristin to pick a different child. She narrowed the list down to three boys, including “Kagan,” a young boy with a narrow esophagus and supposedly mild mental delays. 

“Kagan’s” video “shot an arrow through my heart, and I was like, ‘I have to get this little boy,’” Kristin recalls. “He looked so sad, and I couldn’t leave him there.” 

They didn’t, turning Stasik into a Kruse in 2021. As it turns out, his listing description was almost entirely false. Yes, he had surgery as a baby on his esophagus. But his mental delays, including self-harming behaviors, were far beyond mild. 

“I was picturing bringing home a very different child than the one we did bring home,” Kristin admits. 

To compound that surprise, Kruse family life “was a nightmare from hell” when they got home to Utah, where they were stationed at the time. Stasik’s brain damage affected every part of his life — and therefore of Kruse family life, too. 

“He was understandably terrified of being brought home by two strangers,” Kristin remembers. “He was extremely anxious and frightened, and when that happens, his hyperactivity just goes into extra drive.” 

Things got so bad that Kristin began having panic attacks, thinking she had destroyed their family with Stasik’s adoption. On her own, she knew she was no match for her adopted son’s extreme behaviors, and she had no idea how to change anything. So she checked into a mental hospital. 

“After a week in the hospital and coming back home, I started to realize that he’s got issues, but he’s not destroying my family — my family’s fine,” Kristin says. “I slowly started improving and getting over the panic attacks, and things have just gotten better since then. Stasik and I have bonded, and I know how to handle him.” 

Stasik can also now walk and run, has gained weight and height and is even described as “strong” by those who know him. He has an aggressive side that can manifest itself toward pets and strangers (Rusty often warns people who reach out toward Stasik: “Be careful; he’s cute but violent”). 

“He does still think it’s funny to bite or pinch us, but he doesn’t do it nearly as much as he used to,” says Kristin, who describes Stasik as a total daddy’s boy. “He loves to lay on his dad’s lap and suck his two middle fingers.” 

Fifty-four-year-old Rusty, now retired after 27 years as a soldier, and Kristin have three minor children still at home, including Stasik, whom they have nicknamed Stan. It’s a good thing, too, because Stasik is extremely high-needs behaviorally. Up next on the list is finding the right medication and dosage to help their youngest stop self-harming. 

In the meantime, they will keep smiling as he plays with his beloved toy vacuum cleaner, sleeps in between Kristin and Rusty at night, eats whatever the Kruses feed him and parrots his teenage sister’s Korean lessons. Is it a Hollywood kind of smile? No, because those are fake and fleeting. 

It’s more like a smile that comes from surviving the brunt of a thunderstorm and knowing its raindrops will not only nourish your dry fields into green growth, but also bring a rainbow. 

“As wonderful and rewarding as it is to bring one of these kids home and watch them bloom and get healthier, it’s a huge sacrifice,” says Kristin. “You’re really sacrificing your own life to do something good for someone else. But God gives us grace to do that.”

And that’s something that all the parenting experience in the world can’t guarantee. It instead can only teach you that whatever nourishment you need is on its way.