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escape cycle
ESCAPE FROM THE VICIOUS CYCLE
A desperate cry for help opened the door to Kris' calling.
Kris covered his cell window with a sheet of cardboard, desperate to be alone. He didn’t want anybody to see his next move. He fell to his knees on the cement floor and cried out.
A posture of surrender didn’t come naturally to Kris. He had been running from God his whole life, all the way to North Dakota State Penitentiary.
Escape had been on Kris’ mind from an early age. For years, he longed to get away. When he was young, Kris saw his mom and stepdad struggle with addiction. His stepdad was arrested in front of him on a drug charge.
“I watched the cops take the man I called ‘Dad,’ and loved, away from me,” he says.
When Kris’ mother started a new relationship, her boyfriend was cruel to Kris and his siblings. Feeling abused and neglected, Kris believed he was the only kid in town without a dad.
He knew a few things about his biological father from his mom’s perspective, and none of them were good. Sometimes, she would tell Kris, “You remind me of your dad.” Her words stung. Kris tried to bury the hurt, but anger and resentment began to grow in his heart.
“I’m not saying every day was bad, but every day was hopeless,” says Kris.
While some kids carried backpacks through the halls of school, Kris bore the weight of pain that most people couldn’t see—until he started misbehaving and getting into fights.
A MAN ON THE RUN
Kris’ poor choices escalated and soon moved beyond the classroom. After an attempt to take his own life, Kris entered foster care for a short time. At age 13, Kris stole ice cream from a neighbor’s freezer and was charged with breaking and entering.
After that incident, Kris was placed in a group home. Soon he ran away and was sent to Pine Hills Correctional Facility for youth in Montana. Kris moved from one facility to the next, with no sense of purpose or family support. While still a teen, he began smoking marijuana. In his mind, everyone—including himself—had given up on his future. He completed several stints in juvenile detention. As he entered adulthood, Kris’ destructive choices eventually led to more serious charges for theft and assault.
Twenty-one-year-old Kris arrived at the county jail in Rugby, North Dakota, filled to the brim with years of pent-up rage—at the system, at his mom, and at God.
Though he believed in God, Kris didn’t grow up going to church or talking about Jesus. His family never prayed before meals. He never saw a Bible in their home. And after years of trauma and neglect, he felt that God had abandoned him, too.
At the Rugby jail, a local prison ministry came in and shared the Good News of Jesus: that God had sent His Son into the world to save people. God loved the world, even Kris and the people who had hurt him, that much. When Kris heard the Gospel message, something stirred in his heart. He longed for this kind of hope.
But he wasn’t done running yet.
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
Kris cycled through various religious traditions and faith communities as quickly as he rotated in and out of prison. Ultimately, he was still angry at God when he arrived at North Dakota State Penitentiary.
There, Kris heard about the Prison Fellowship® Academy, a yearlong program built on biblical values and open to people of any or no faith, and he enrolled. He appreciated the new living situation and positive community, but by then, he had little interest in Jesus.
While the Academy had no faith requirement, it did mandate full commitment and participation of its members for the program to work. Kris was playing cards in the dayroom when someone noticed he had skipped class. He was given a choice—either he needed to attend class consistently, or else he would need to disenroll from the program. Kris chose to leave.
“I was getting miserable,” Kris says. “I was hating people. I was judging people.”
Despite his growing resentment toward others, Kris needed connection. One day he called up an old friend from the prison phone. The friend, a former cellmate whom Kris considered a mentor and confidant, was a follower of Jesus.
The man asked Kris, “How’s your walk with God going?”
Kris answered honestly: He wasn’t walking with God. He had been running in the other direction. He had even thrown away the Bible this friend had bought him.
On the other end of the line, the friend expressed nothing but care and concern for Kris.
“No matter what you choose, I love you,” the friend said. “I’m going to be there for you. But you know you need to get on your knees and surrender.”
For a few weeks, Kris continued to call his friend and listen. Kris still wasn’t sold on Jesus, but after years of feeling invisible, it meant something to know somebody cared. The voice on the other end of the phone, someone he couldn’t even see, was listening.
If that was possible, he wondered, maybe God was listening, too. Then something inside Kris began to shift.
RISING ABOVE THE RAGE
“The Holy Spirit just convicted me,” says Kris.
With the cardboard cover on the window, he knelt on the floor of his cell and cried out to God, asking for forgiveness. Kris was desperate for the kind of peace his old friend had found. He longed to release the rage he’d been carrying.
“I just felt miserable inside,” says Kris. “I ended up surrendering my life to Jesus Christ and asking him to be my Lord and Savior.”
He promised to serve God for the rest of his life. He also knew he couldn’t do the journey alone.
Kris found Eddie, the Academy manager, and asked to rejoin the program. He knew Eddie understood the pressures of prison life because Eddie had lived it, having once served time in prison as well. This wasn’t the same Kris who had enrolled the first time. He was ready to grow in community with others. Eddie and the volunteers saw his sincerity and gave him a second chance. In July 2022, Kris returned to the Academy.
Kris calls it a place of “brotherly kindness and community.” His fellow participants looked out for one another and built strong friendships. Led by mentors like Eddie, they learned to embrace biblical values such as integrity and responsibility. Kris noticed the way Eddie served others, always present and willing to help.
With each passing day, Kris’ heart toward others softened. His sense of purpose grew as he meditated on God’s Word. Though he was incarcerated in a maximum-security facility, he felt free.
“There were challenges, but they were challenges I took on with gladness,” he says. “[God] is not going to let me stay in my mess. He’s not going to give me peace doing the wrong thing.”
“[God] is not going to let me stay in my mess. He’s not going to give me peace doing the wrong thing.”
—Kris
THE JOY OF CONNECTION
In between prison stints, Kris had had a daughter, Samantha. She was 8 years old when Kris signed up for Prison Fellowship Angel Tree. Through Angel Tree, a local church delivered a Christmas gift and a message of love to Samantha on Kris’ behalf. Church volunteers delivered the exact gift, a doll, that she had been wishing for. That Christmas, Kris felt connected to his family back home instead of feeling lonely and ashamed. And his daughter knew that Dad was thinking of her.
“She was super excited to get something from Dad,” says Kris, “and it made me feel good.”
As Kris strengthened bonds with his family, he also strived to make peace with those around him in prison. He formed healthy relationships with fellow prisoners—situations that once seemed impossible to repair. Kris welcomed those who visited from outside churches and communities, and as they poured into him, he sought to pour back into others.
“Everybody was just showing me love and support,” says Kris. “And that’s something I never really experienced [before].”
NO LONGER THE SAME
As Kris looked forward to his release day, he hardly recognized himself. He wasn’t the same person who first walked into that prison.
“I no longer looked at myself as a prisoner, but as a missionary in a land where a lot of people can’t go,” Kris says. “I started trying to minister to the staff, to the residents. When I started actually caring about people … that’s when I sensed that I wasn’t the same person that I used to be.”
On Aug. 8, 2024, Kris was released. Eddie picked him up at the prison gates, ready with suitcases full of new clothes for Kris. A friend from church had purchased them, along with shoes, hygiene items, and other essentials, to help Kris begin life outside.
As soon as he left prison, Kris changed out of his state-issued uniform and put on something new: not just a fresh wardrobe but a new identity as a free man.
“I was blessed,” says Kris. “It let me know God loves me, people love me. I never really had nobody spend that much money on me for clothes and stuff like that. So, it was amazing.”
From there, Eddie took him to a local coffee shop run by another believer. Inside, Kris found a room full of people, including his sister and daughter, who were waiting to welcome him home.
“When I started actually caring about people … that’s when I sensed that I wasn’t the same person that I used to be.”
—Kris
A PLACE TO GROW
“It was a blessing to see how much support I had when I got out,” says Kris, who knows more than 400,000 people are released from prison each year in the U.S. and face overwhelming challenges in reentry. Often, coming out of prison, a person’s work history is sparse. And even with the right qualifications, an applicant may be turned away due to their record. Former prisoners may struggle to find stable housing, too, if landlords are reluctant to rent them a place.
Kris was grateful to move to Father’s Farm, a Christian discipleship program and reentry home for men. The program’s motto is, “Preparing men to thrive in a broken world.”
Today, Kris shares the house with a handful of other men, all of whom have similar past struggles or addictions. Some of them help care for the farm animals on the property. Outside Kris’ bedroom window, a 72-foot, partially underground greenhouse grows vegetables that the men enjoy all year. Their home is a place of light and life—the kind of peace he’s been longing for.
“We got a community of believers up here that you can’t really find anywhere else,” says Kris.
THE GOODNESS OF GOD
Kris now works for a board member of Father’s Farm who owns a construction company. He is a member of Harvest Church, a small local congregation where he serves nearly every week. He manages the sound board for Sunday morning worship. Since he runs sound for rehearsal and for the service, he loves getting a “double dose of worship,” as he calls it.
At church, Kris has a place to belong. He feels accepted as a member of their family.
“It’s cool to have somewhere you can walk in your calling, and there’s not people thinking you have to be a certain special person,” he says.
Kris also feels a new sense of belonging with his own family. He and his mom have reconciled, and he feels that she is proud of him.
“Our relationship is like everything I always wished it would be,” says Kris.
Now, Kris wants to be known as the biggest encourager in the room. When he’s not spending time at church or with family, he enjoys writing and performing Christian rap. With both words and actions, he lives to reflect the goodness of God.
Looking back, Kris knows his journey to freedom began in the least likely place: in prison. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s a ripple effect,” says Kris. “It doesn’t just benefit us that go through the program. It benefits everybody that we now do life with, whether it’s at a work environment, our neighborhood, our churches, our communities.”
He adds, “Just like hurt people hurt people—free people free people.”
“Just like hurt people hurt people—free people free people.”
—Kris