Let Me Have My Son

By Cristobal Krusen

This book contains collected prayer letters written by Cristóbal Krusen on behalf of his son, Daniel, who has spent the major part of his adult life in psychiatric hospitals in Virginia, Mexico, and Minnesota.

 

What began for Cris as cries of help for his son became words of encouragement to many others who were going through their own times of trial, words that still today offer hope and healing for the broken-hearted. As you will read in this book, Cris has seen "sore and many troubles" but knows what it means to "see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

 

These prayer letters have now also become the inspiration behind the feature-length film Let Me Have My Son. In the semi-fictionalized film version, Cris and Daniel become Ben Whitmore and his son Benny, but the central issues of the film remain the same as that of this book. As it has been said, love completes what hope begins.

 

And faith will carry us through life's often arduous journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K-Bar Media
• Release date: Mar 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781736653753

Book preview

Acknowledgements

The Bible says to acknowledge the Lord in all your ways, and He will direct your paths. Without a doubt, the first and foremost acknowledgment belongs to Him. If I had not believed to see His goodness in the land of the living, this book would never have been written.

At the same time, there are those individuals whom God brings into one’s life for the purpose of encouragement and solidarity, and without whom I am equally certain this book would not have been written.

First among those is Bill Curtis, who suggested I write a monthly letter on Daniel’s behalf to friends who will pray.

I thank my grandmother, Weesie Valdez Sauer, who made an indelible impression on me as a child that God is love. She left this earth when I was eleven years old, yet her gentleness and kindness are still at work in my heart, giving me strength to believe all things, hope all things, and bear all things.

My son, Daniel Krusen, has been a patient in psychiatric hospitals in Virginia, Mexico, and now Minnesota and these letters (more accurately, emails) were written to friends asking them to pray for him, his situation, and his family.

As time passed, I began receiving notes from those on the prayer list asking me if I had thought of putting the letters into a book. Many people told me that such a book could help others passing through difficult times, regardless of whether their trials were related to issues of mental health. 

What began for me as cries of help for my son, I offer you as encouragement during your times of trial, whatever those trials might be. I have seen the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, and I know He is with us when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

So finally, I thank all those who have received these letters over the years and prayed for Daniel and our family. There are no words to fully express my gratitude for the gift of your prayers.

––––––––

Cristóbal B. Krusen

St. Paul, Minnesota

March 2022

Foreword

If you’re like me, it’s difficult to imagine a father who has no dreams for his children. Certainly, I had dreams for mine. Even before they were born. 

Marrying young in life, I wanted to have children right away, but my wife wasn’t ready. I tried my best to be patient. She had had a difficult childhood, and living as we did hand-to-mouth, I know she worried as to how we could properly care for a child of our own. Those concerns began to dissipate, however, as we both moved toward a greater spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ.

In 1982, my wife, Elizabeth, became pregnant, and our son, Daniel, was born in Miami, Florida the following year. I was thirty years old. 

You might say I doted on the little fella. Talk about a proud father! At birth, he scored a perfect ten on the Apgar, with big hands and a full head of silky, black hair. That combined with his wizened face gave him the air of a little sage.

I remember walking down the hospital hallway that first evening to check on him in the nursery. I spotted him right away—the best-looking newborn in the bunch! What a handsome kid, I thought to myself, casting a glance at the other babies as they squirmed and hollered in their bassinets. Crybabies.

Not Daniel, though. No, no. He was perfectly content... sleeping peacefully... destined for greatness, I was sure. Beyond that, God and I had a pact. I was to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4), and God was to make him mighty upon the earth (Psalm 112:2).

A month shy of his first birthday, Daniel was walking and talking. According to my master plan, developed before he was born, he was going to be an excellent student, a good athlete, and a devoted follower of Christ.

We moved back to New York City when Daniel was eighteen months old, settling in Staten Island next to our home church, the International Christian Center on Richmond Avenue. When I say next to the church, I speak literally as we parked our little motor home around the back of the main building, plugging into the mother ship by means of an extension cord running out of an office window on the second floor. 

I’m a big believer in family, and the International Christian Center was all that and more. So many friends! So much kindness and love! At the time, I called it a UN (United Nations) church, as the congregants seemed to come from every nation on earth. Well, not literally, but it seemed that way. And we all got along. And Elizabeth and I, an interracial couple (she black, me white) were fully embraced and accepted.

When Daniel was about three years old, I watched him and his sister playing one day in their back yard. Well, not the back yard exactly; rather, it was the church parking lot! But on a quiet, midweek afternoon with only a few cars parked here and there, I chose to see it as their personal playground.

The harsh winter had passed and it was a lovely spring day. As I watched my children running happily about, I felt deep peace and joy. They could have been playing in the gardens of Buckingham Palace for all they knew. 

And then, seemingly from nowhere, a thought entered my mind: In the future, your son will turn away from me. It felt like an arrow pierced my heart. But it wasn’t the blow of an enemy. I daresay the words came from God himself. Then, I heard the voice again, saying, One day, though, he’ll return.

And that was it. Nothing more.

I never talked much with anyone about that day. If I can make the comparison, I think I must have felt something akin to what Mary, the mother of Jesus, felt when she was told by the prophet Simeon, and a sword will pierce your own soul as well (Luke 2:35). Like Mary, I contemplated what the words might mean, and treasured them up in my heart (Luke 2:19).

We moved to California when Daniel was four years old. He was tall for his age, fast, and had excellent hand-eye coordination. He wasn’t a stellar student, but he held his own academically and was a great little athlete, especially on the soccer field. In regard to spiritual matters, he was special indeed. He was able to quote considerable sections of the Bible, enjoyed going to church, and often accompanied me whenever I engaged in street evangelism. I remember in particular how tender-hearted he was to the elderly, especially elderly men. 

Dad, we need to talk to that man, he’d say to me.

I’d look around, spot the man in question and nod. On such occasions, more often than not, Daniel wanted me to be his spokesperson.

Ahem, excuse me, sir.

Yes?

This is my son, Daniel, and he wants to tell you something.

Yes? 

Daniel would whisper in my ear and I’d turn to the man. My son wants you to know that if you don’t believe in Jesus, when you die you’ll go to the lake of fire.

Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of the message for the startled old man! Daniel would whisper again in my ear, and I continued.

But my son wants you to also know that if you believe in Jesus, when you die you’ll go to Heaven.

In every instance I remember, the reaction people had was to grow quiet, lower their gaze and say thank you to the little boy. 

One time in particular, Daniel addressed two elderly men sitting in a fast-food restaurant. Daniel focused on one of them in particular and after I had delivered his message about faith and the afterlife, the man grew quiet. Not so his friend!

What have I been telling you all these years? he shouted across the table at him. Out of the mouths of babes and infants... Maybe you’ll listen to me now!

Judging from the man’s expression, I think he might have done just that. Eternity will tell. 

We moved from California to Virginia just after Daniel’s eighth birthday. The next four years were special, and father and son grew especially close. I saw my master plan becoming more and more a reality as Daniel grew in stature and favor with God and men. He maintained a tender heart to the things of God, and his athletic prowess continued to develop.

We spent many hours playing basketball, riding our bicycles through the neighborhood, even rising before dawn to go jogging. I was quite the proud papa.

Around the time of his twelfth birthday, I noticed some signs of rebellion. I took it mostly in stride, however. He was becoming a young man, I reasoned; this was to be expected to some degree. Further, I recalled the word I had received in the church parking lot in Staten Island: He will depart from me for a time, but later return.

Calling that to mind made me thankful; it had been a head’s up if you will, a warning to get ready, to make preparations.

But the bottom fell out when Daniel turned fourteen. Elizabeth and I had separated, and I had legal custody of our four children. The kids and I moved back to California to try and start life over there, but it didn’t work out as planned. So we moved to Mexico for a year.

That usually strikes people as a little odd, but it made sense to me. I had numerous friends in Mexico, and I spoke fluent Spanish. I was at home in the culture and knew we’d be welcome there.

We settled in Toluca, west of Mexico City, where we had the support of a wonderful church community. But Daniel, who had started doing drugs in the United States, continued doing drugs in Mexico. After a year south of the border, we returned to Virginia, and I set about trying to restore my marriage and help my son get his life together. 

The first three months back in the States, however, saw even further deterioration in Daniel’s condition. He showed an uncanny ability to locate every deadbeat drug user in the neighborhood it seemed. And then, a miracle. Or so I thought at the time. He swore off tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, anything and everything illicit and illegal.

He was the first one ready for church on Sunday and spent hours reading his Bible. And he was re-discovering his athletic prowess, too, joining the football team and playing basketball for his Christian school.

I was over the moon. It seemed that the word I had heard in the church parking lot had been fulfilled, as in fully filled. Daniel had turned away from God for a time, yes, but now he was back, just as the quiet voice had said to me that lovely spring day.

Nine months passed, which were a wonderful time of healing and restoration.

Then, the bottom fell out again... some sort of psychotic break... fears and suspicions of people talking about him... kids across the street wanting to fight with him. Several times, he stepped out of his classroom at school and began walking toward New York City, nearly four hundred miles away.

Other times, he took off for Florida to be with his grandparents. No suitcase, no money, no ticket. Frequently, the sheriff’s office picked him up running down the interstate with the family dog, a German Shepherd named Chance.

Early one evening, we were driving through the neighborhood when he began punching the car windows unprovoked. A CD player happened to be on the front seat between us. He picked it up and hurled it into the rear window.

Then he grabbed my arm and wanted me to pull over. He had spotted two teenagers standing outside a house. He thought they had a problem with him—that they wanted to fight him for some reason, but they didn’t know who he was. I managed to get him back in the car.

I knew what I had to do. I drove him to Maryview Hospital in Portsmouth for a psychiatric evaluation.

The nurse on duty looked at Daniel and smiled. I looked at him, too. He was such a handsome young man and seemed perfectly fine now. But as the nurse asked him questions—simple questions—he began to grow increasingly uncomfortable. He ended up spending the night at Maryview, and the next three weeks as well, isolated most of that time due to his unpredictable physical assaults. 

As I look back on that fateful evening, I can say it marked a farewell of sorts to my son. For the nearly two years that followed, he was in and out of various psychiatric treatment facilities. When he turned eighteen, he was civilly committed to Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia.

On the eve of Daniel’s nineteenth birthday, I began writing a monthly letter to a group of friends. I sent the letter through email, asking my friends to pray for him. To pray for his family. Some might say I displayed an admirable vulnerability in doing so; others that I was more vulnerable than I needed to be. I didn’t think about any of that at the time.

The letters—when they were written—were not meant to be neatly packaged in a book. They were more often the cries of a desperate father looking for help, a father who happened to believe that prayer represented the best hope for his son’s future. But I will stop here and let that story—the one told through these letters and the community of support that grew around me—take you further on the journey of a father’s search for the healing of his son.

2002

5 April

Dear friends: This is the first of what I intend to be monthly letters regarding Daniel Krusen’s progress. Some image of me (and Daniel, if you’ve met him) will come to mind as you read these lines. 

Tomorrow, April 6, is his nineteenth birthday. He’s still in the hospital. It’s a state mental hospital here in Virginia. I cannot take him out. Not yet. But that time is coming.

Here are some of his symptoms: He is delusional and sometimes paranoid in his thinking. He believes (whether it is a constant thought or not, I do not know) that many people around him are clones. When I visit him, he usually expresses the feeling that I am a clone, and that his siblings are clones.

He is afraid that certain staff members in the hospital are going to bury him alive, but clone him first, and then tell me that the clone of Daniel is the real Daniel. He sometimes thinks that certain foods and/or beverages will have a cleansing effect on his brain, and wash away the drugs he once took that he feels are still in his system (though he has not done any drugs for more than three years).

At one time, he was physically assaultive toward hospital staff on a near-daily basis. Until recently, he was accounting for more than half of all recorded physical assaults out of a patient population of more than one hundred and thirty men. Thank God that his physical aggression has now reduced significantly.

At one time, Daniel was taking a drug called clozapine, or Clozaril, that seemed to produce several beneficial results. This drug, however, is known for its potentially dangerous side effects. When his blood pressure shot up on several occasions and he had seizures, its use was discontinued.

For two and a half years now (as I write this), no doctor has been able to prescribe any medication (or combination of medications) that has produced a significant, or even noticeable, change in Daniel’s behavior or thought processes.

He has made no advancement in his personal education for more than two years. Previously, he was at an adolescent facility where he was too disruptive to be in the school for any significant period of time. He finds it nearly impossible to focus on tasks. When reading on his own, his mind will often get stuck on a certain word, which he says he can’t get or understand. But the word is usually a simple word, which has been in his vocabulary since the fifth or sixth grade.

He has a Bible, and it is the one book he will try to read, but it doesn’t seem that he gets far. 

On the positive side, Daniel still has that twinkle in his eye that some of you know. He still has an excellent memory. He is tall and handsome, and I grieve that he is unable to exercise his incredible athletic abilities, especially in track and field and basketball.

He loves Jesus and participates when we pray for him on our family visits. Don’t conjure up scenes from The Exorcist when you think of him. He is a lost sheep: hurting, wounded, hungry, cold. He chose to rebel and walk away from God. Now, our Master is searching for him in the labyrinths of his mind. Let us pray that he will meet the Good Shepherd, and the Good Shepherd will set him free.

I have been told—and I believe—that I have great spiritual authority in Daniel’s life because I am his father. I am speaking hope and healing into the shattered areas of his soul. I am commanding blessings over him as his father. I cannot tell you how to pray, only that you ask the Lord how to pray. That’s what Jesus’ disciples did.

Again, know that I love you all and know that Daniel loves you, too. He is my boy, and he is your boy.

Daniel’s Dad

8 May

Dear friends: I think of how Jesus called His disciples His friends. Facing His most difficult hour (the night of His betrayal), He turned to them for comfort and support. He even asked them to pray with Him. 

You are my friends (and no, I don’t think I’m Jesus). And we’re praying together for Daniel. To a greater or lesser degree, you share in my agony and travail of spirit. Please receive my sincere thanks for your comfort and support. I speak on Daniel’s behalf, too (or, perhaps, primarily).

Just so you know, every time I tell Daniel that people around the world are praying for him, his face lightens up, and he smiles and says either, That’s good, or Really?

Typically, we visit Daniel once a week. We (my other three children and I) visited him this past Sunday. It was a lovely day in Williamsburg. As we walked toward the building where he now lives, I felt joy in my heart and had the sense that Daniel is going to be healed.

Sometimes we speak things, declare things and order things; then there are times when we know things. And I want to share with you that I have this sense—actually, it’s more an assurance—that Daniel is going to be OK. It doesn’t matter what others say or think, how Daniel looks or behaves; there is light at the end of the tunnel, and Daniel is going to come through the other side.

We spent an hour visiting him on Sunday. For the most part, he was responsive. Imagine if your son were to die—in an accident, say. You would never get over it completely; you would work your way through a process, a recovery that would lead you to a state of equilibrium (hopefully) and a certain acceptance in order to carry on with life.

For the past two and a half years, I have been given the news every day that my son has died. I speak figuratively, of course. But the jarring, painful emotions are awakened every day. Daniel has been locked away from society and even himself for two and a half years.

The infant I carried on my shoulders—the firstborn child who was God’s gift to me and my wife—has been shut down. Down, but not out. Yes, there has been a drought in the land. There has been a famine. I think, however, we are beginning to turn the corner. Our prayers are taking on a cumulative effect; there is a crack in Satan’s prison walls, and our prayers must continue for that crack to spread and for the walls to come down.

I hugged Daniel this past Sunday and held him for a long time. I thanked God that he is not dead. My son is not dead. He is alive. I think of a line from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. I can’t quote it exactly. It goes something like this: There’s word that Aslan is on the move... The White Witch had brought perennial winter to Narnia. Winter without Christmas. Now, get ready, the Lord’s turn is coming! He is on the move.

Daniel’s Dad

14 June

Dear friends: I recently met with the entire team involved in Daniel’s care. I was particularly struck by the caring attitude of his new doctor, Dr. M. As a staff, they were concerned that Daniel was withdrawing from interaction with those around him, which in turn was deepening his withdrawal from reality. Pray for Dr. M. and all the staff to treat Daniel with care and not give up on him. 

I have given my consent for Daniel to re-start Clozaril (the one anti-psychotic medication that did appear to help him in the past, but which was discontinued when he had a seizure). The doctors have completed numerous tests (including several EKGs, EEGs and extensive blood analyses), and the conclusion is that Daniel is physically healthy. It may be that the seizure wasn’t genuine; however, they will be monitoring him carefully, and the dosage of Clozaril will be raised gradually.

During this time of hospitalization, I have noticed that Daniel does better when he is able to talk and interact with other people, especially those his own age. If the Clozaril can get him to the point where he is able to engage more readily with others, I believe that can trigger further improvement.

At the same time, the overarching goal for Daniel, as I see it, is for him to cry out to God for healing. When I visited him ten days ago, I wrote down a portion of Psalm 18 on the back of my business card and gave it to him: I called to the LORD in my distress. From His temple He heard my voice and my cry reached His ears.

Daniel is holding on to that card and each time we have spoken on the phone since, he reads it back to me.

At the same time, I know Daniel