Chapter 1

Born Into The Storm

God Sees First, Names Later

Some children are born into peace. I was born into a world already set against me. But even in the beginning, I believe God was there. Watching. Holding. Waiting. Like a gardener kneeling beside broken soil, knowing something would still grow.

Not every child enters life wrapped in warmth. Some of us are born into warzones before we ever learn to walk, talk, or cry out for help. That was my beginning. My biological mother was addicted to heroin and surviving by selling her body. I wasn't her first child. I wasn't even her only secret. I came into the world as a child of the streets, unplanned, unseen, and quickly unloved.

My father, from what little I was told, was likely her pimp. He was a ghost with a name who existed only on paper. Another man who left more damage than memories. By ten months old, I had already been tossed between strangers like loose change. Someone used my back as an ashtray. That's not a metaphor. That's not poetic license. Someone literally put out their cigarette on me.

At ten months old, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and a diagnosis stamped across my chart: "irreversibly brain damaged." A label no child should wear, let alone one who hadn't even learned to crawl. I couldn't sit up. I didn't respond to my mother's voice. I shook, screamed, and rolled my eyes backward. Doctors didn't expect much from me. Truth be told, neither did anyone else.

The woman who gave birth to me was already slipping through the cracks. Living in drug dens and shelters, sometimes leaving me with strangers so she could get high or hustle—sometimes just disappearing. One day she left me with a woman she barely knew, a babysitter named Jessica, and vanished. When she didn't come back, the police were called. That's when the system stepped in.

On July 25, 1973, the State of Illinois took custody of me for "neglect." I was just over a year old, but already the courts were signing papers that said my mother couldn't, or wouldn't, protect me. From that moment forward, I was a ward of the state. That sounds sterile on paper, but what it really meant was this: no stability, no security, no one to tuck me in at night.

I didn't know it then, but God was already working through the cracks.

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you."

— Isaiah 49:15

That promise wasn't something I had heard—but somehow, I lived it. Even when everyone else gave up, God didn't. I was placed in one foster home, then another, then another. In the early ones, I barely ate. I couldn't chew food like the other kids. I flinched at touch, cried uncontrollably, and showed signs of developmental delay. One family noticed I wasn't normal because I rolled my eyes back and shook randomly. Another thought I might be having seizures. Most didn't keep me long enough to find out.

When I landed in the Johnson home in 1973, I was just a shadow of a boy. Malnourished, cross-eyed, small for my age, and far behind developmentally. But there's one image that still clings to my memory like a faded photograph that won't burn—a red brick house with blue carpet. I don't know whose it was. I don't know how long I was there. But that house stands like a ghost in my childhood, quiet and unmovable, as if God left a landmark in my mind to prove I had passed through.

In a life where most places blurred together like rain on glass, this one detail—those bricks, that carpet—remained. Maybe because it was one of the only things that didn't. But something happened in that home. That house wasn't perfect—but it was planted soil. And maybe for the first time, I started to grow not just as a child—but as a soul.

I believe now it was God's hand, steadying me in silence. That moment of stability was like water to roots I didn't know I had. A whisper of what would become the unshakable faith to come. For eight or nine months, I wasn't moved. For eight or nine months, I wasn't left behind.

That sliver of consistency cracked open something in me. I began chewing food. I started using words. My body, once stiff and slow, started catching up. The boy labeled as retarded started to smile. The boy who had no name began to be called "Chris." Not a case number. Not "that one." Chris.

Then, without warning, I was moved again. The Johnsons had licensing issues, and all the children had to be pulled. I was sent to the Krafcky family on July 29, 1976. They were my fourth placement. I was four years old.

Something about the Krafcky's was different. They were strict, but they saw me. They didn't expect perfection, but they gave me structure. It was the first time I felt like I might belong somewhere. The caseworker said I "quickly became an integral member of their family." I guess that's social worker talk for "he finally exhaled."

When Brian and Heather were placed with us in 1977—siblings who came with behavior problems—I didn't act out. I didn't regress. If anything, I rose. I became "the well-behaved one." It wasn't that I was perfect. I just wasn't about to risk losing the first safe place I'd ever known.

That same year, the Krafcky's adopted an infant named Jessica. Another shift. Another chance for me to fade into the background. But I didn't. Somehow, I still mattered. They wanted to adopt me. Not foster. Not maybe. Not temporary. Legally theirs. Legally someone's.

The case was transferred to the adoption unit. On April 24, 1978, I was legally freed for adoption. On August 18, 1978, I became Christopher S. Krafcky. For the first time in my life, I had a last name that stuck. A name gave me grounding—but I still didn't know who I was.

"Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be."

— Psalm 139:16

I wasn't an accident. I wasn't a mistake. I was seen long before anyone had called me by name. We lived in Wheeling back then—a quiet suburban town north of Chicago where the houses looked perfect, even if everything inside them wasn't. It was after we moved to Glenview that the cracks began to show. That's when the discipline changed. That's when the shadows got longer. That's when things shifted for real.

There were moments of warmth, sure, but also discipline that crossed lines. When we got in trouble, they'd lock us in closets or send us to the basement. One time, Heather was locked in so long she ate raw potatoes just to keep from going hungry. It became normal to fear silence, to jump at footsteps in the hallway, to wonder if today would be the day you ended up behind a door that wouldn't open.

I lived in a house with walls and rules. But there were no roots, only restraints. And even in that silence, I remember thinking: "Is this what it means to be loved? Or just… owned?" That's when my leaf began to tremble. But it still held on.

Our dog, Gretchen, was a black dachshund who seemed to understand what we were going through. Whenever our parents raised their hands to discipline us, Gretchen would try to bite them in our defense. They had to lock her up whenever punishments were coming. She died after getting hit by a car right in front of our house.

I remember watching it happen. It felt like losing the only one who was trying to protect us. Gretchen couldn't speak, but she fought for us. And I remember wondering—why would God take the one defender I had left?

Now, I see it differently. Maybe He allowed me to feel that loss, so I'd one day understand what it means to be rescued by Someone stronger. Someone who never leaves—even when the defender is gone.

I went to OLPH Catholic School from Kindergarten through 2nd grade. That's Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Ironically named, because I didn't feel much help from anyone. I struggled to fit in. The other kids could sense I didn't belong. I was different. Worn around the edges.

And then there was the thing I couldn't hide, even when I tried. A neurological condition called nystagmus. My eyes danced without music, trembling back and forth like they were afraid to settle. And when they moved, my head followed. Shaking, jerking, trying to compensate.

Try looking someone in the eye when your head won't stop swaying. Try focusing on words when the page won't sit still. Even as a kid, I knew I looked strange. Like I was glitching through real life. I didn't have a name for it then. I just knew people stared. And when they didn't, they avoided me altogether.

I started to believe my head shake was a fence, one that kept people out. To this day, it's why I keep most of my videos faceless. The shake never left… but neither did the shame.

Teachers didn't help much either. One nun dragged me into a coat closet in 1st grade and hit me. I learned quickly that even the people who were supposed to guide you could hurt you behind closed doors.

In 2nd grade, I had my first kiss—a girl named Jenny. Sweet moment. Innocent. One of the few memories from that time that didn't carry bruises.

But that innocence didn't last. One day, I brought some pills to school; plaque pills, they were called. I didn't know what they were. Thought they were candy or something. I gave them to a friend, and they turned his teeth red. I thought it was funny.

The school didn't. I got sent home, and that's when the beatings came. I was expelled after that. Not suspended. Expelled. At just seven years old.

Sometime around then, I got caught stealing from an A&P grocery store. I don't remember what I took—something small. Something a kid might take just to feel like he had something of his own.

The power had gone out, so my adoptive mom had to walk to the store because the garage door wouldn't open. She was livid. When we got home, there was yelling, maybe even a shove—I can't say for sure what hit me—but I remember the sting, the sudden snap of pain, and the bloody nose that followed.

I don't know if it was a fist, a palm, or something else. All I know is—I bled.

And somewhere in that pain, I remember something else just as real. A thought that whispered, "Don't disappear. Don't give up."

I didn't know it yet, but even then, I was already beginning to cling. I remember the look on her face and how small I felt. It wasn't the first time. Wouldn't be the last.

Reflection

Some leaves fall. Others hold on. I didn't choose my family. I didn't choose the trauma. But somehow, I was still there. Through ashtrays and hospital beds, locked closets and false names. God was doing something underground. The cracks didn't crush me. They covered me. Even then, my faith, fragile and unformed, was taking root.

Scripture to Hold

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart…"

— Jeremiah 1:5

Encouragement

If you were born into chaos, don't believe the lie that you were a mistake. You are known. You are rooted. And even in the hardest soil, God can grow a leaf that won't let go.