Kristin Beaucher was an active, chubby-cheeked, blonde-haired toddler when her health suddenly declined. After a lengthy battle with brain cancer, she died at the age of 9. Her parents have strived to honor their daughter and her deep faith in multiple ways, including through the unusual business bearing her name.
Chris and Heather Beaucher had much to be grateful for in 2002, with careers they enjoyed, a happy marriage and an adorable 2-year-old daughter named Kristin. Then, over the course of one week, everything turned upside down. Kristin woke up in great pain, crying and clutching the back of her neck with her little hand. She vomited and felt better, only for the pain to return after naptime. It was a cycle that continued for days. After multiple anxiety-filled trips to the doctor and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, a CAT scan revealed a brain tumor covering most of Kristin’s cerebellum. She soon had surgery to remove the growth. Pathology reports revealed it to be medulloblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer primarily affecting children and young adults. She was given a 13% chance of survival.
In his book, “Loved by an ‘Angel,’” Chris wrote, “I was in a state of shock … my world had stopped just that quickly. Nothing else mattered in the whole world. All I wanted to do was get Kristin home, wake up the next morning and see that it was all just a bad dream.” The next two years of their new reality were arduous, filled with chemotherapy, pediatric oncology appointments and various treatments to improve Kristin’s chance of survival. Through it all, she maintained a positive outlook that encouraged her parents and caregivers alike.
Finally, spinal taps and MRIs showed no sign of cancer. Kristin had beaten the odds. She was able to go to preschool and learn how to be a kid, but like many children who experience cancer early in life, there were some struggles. “She was a little lady trapped in a child’s body,” Chris said. “Kristin had to grow up way too fast, and she didn’t understand why other children acted the way they did. Kristin was more comfortable with adults rather than children.” However, her strength was apparent as she adjusted to her new normal. She was always helpful and kind, thinking of others more than herself. As is often the case when families go through trauma, Chris and Heather divorced. Later, they would learn that Kristin had prayed for God to do whatever it would take to bring her father back home again—including her cancer returning. It was an innocent prayer that still haunts Chris because of the events that followed. Kristin was 8 when the awful, familiar symptoms returned. This time, the tumor was even bigger and the effects were greater. Almost two months after her ninth birthday, on Dec. 6, 2009, Kristin lost her battle with cancer.
“At 9, she was more of a spiritual adult than anyone I’d ever met. I wanted to be as close to God as she was.”
Chris Beaucher
“During her last four days, she was in hospice care at home. She couldn’t even move, but when she took her last breath, she had one tear that came down the side of her face, and she smiled so big,” Chris said, his eyes filling with tears. “I couldn’t imagine the beauty of what she was looking at. We hadn’t seen her smile for so long.” Twenty days after Kristin’s death, Chris began writing a book to tell her full cancer story and completed it by February. Chris credits his daughter’s faith as the reason he became serious about his own relationship with God. “After she prayed for her cancer to return and watching the Holy Spirit work through her, that was literally the difference for me,” he said. “In her, I saw something I’d never seen before. At 9, she was more of a spiritual adult than anyone I’d ever met. I wanted to be as close to God as she was.”
Before he could get to that point, Chris found himself going through one of his darkest seasons. His grief was so intense that he no longer wanted to continue living without his daughter. He went to church one particularly difficult day looking for a pastor who could tell him something that would give him hope again. The wait was long, and another man, Justin Hudgins, was also waiting to speak to the pastor.
“I smoked at the time and really wanted a cigarette, so when Justin said, ‘I’m going to have a cigarette,’ I stepped outside with him to smoke,” Chris said. “We ended up talking until three in the morning. That’s when he became like my brother.” The men soon started a ministry called Be Jesus, through which they would help people after work. “Basically, we try to help wherever the Lord leads us,” Chris said. “We’ve built ramps, repaired roofs, done HVAC work, cut grass, whatever needs done.”
Chris and Heather remarried and had another child together, a son named Karson, who shares initials with his late sister. “When Karson was a baby, any time he would pass a picture of Kristin, he would smile like he had seen her before,” Heather said. While Chris was content working as an electrician, he began to feel that God had something different in store. One of Chris’ friends at work raised reptiles and was in the feeder bug business.
“He kept asking us to get into the roach business with him, but I put him off for a year or two,” Chris said. “Well, one day, I got tired of him asking and said I’d talk to my wife, knowing full well my wife wasn’t going to allow us to bring roaches into the house. She said, ‘Sure, I’ll give it a try.’ Well, she was supposed to be my out. I told him we’d do it.” They started their business in a little garage room, and it started to grow. “The first time I ever heard God [speaking to my spirit], He woke me up and said to quit my job and start depending on Him for a living,” Chris said. He worried about telling Heather. “She had no reason to believe I’d actually heard from God.” Once again, his wife’s response surprised him. “If you did hear from Him, it will be OK,” Heather said. “If you didn’t, then it won’t. But it will still be OK.”
Justin and his wife, Amanda, were feeling the same nudge and partnered with the Beauchers to build the business together. Naming it “Kristin’s Bugs” was Justin’s idea. “I said, ‘If it’s alright, let’s share Kristin’s story,’” Justin said. “The Lord said to make the business all about relationships, just like with Him. He said if you take care of my people, I’ll take care of you, so we started building relationships with our customers, and here we are.” The business is headquartered at a large outbuilding on land the Hudgins own near Jackson Lake. They raise several types of insects that comprise a healthy reptile’s diet, including banded crickets, hornworms, silkworms, calcium grubs, super worms and mealworms. Dubia roaches—a tropical cockroach species native to South and Central America—of various sizes are their biggest seller. These bugs have an excellent balance of the nutrients reptiles need to survive.
A typical day at Kristin’s Bugs begins around 7 a.m., with Justin tending to the insects while Chris does office work in a separate room. Ironically, Chris is highly allergic to roaches and cannot be in the same room as the bugs, much less touch and pack them. Once Justin has fulfilled the day’s orders and the insects are in containers, Chris packs them into boxes and drops off the packages at the post office or FedEx. Every order includes an encouraging Bible verse handwritten on colorful Post-it notes. The business often receives feedback that the verses were a comfort to their customers at a difficult time, even from people who say they are not particularly religious.
“Our whole day, we ask ourselves what we are doing to glorify God,” Justin said. “Wherever we are, at the shop or at the store, we try to be a wonderful example of who Jesus is.” Though honoring a child through a feeder bug business may sound odd to some, the Beauchers feel certain that Kristin would approve. “Kristin loved animals and was really good with them, too, so she would be OK with this, I’m sure,” Chris said. “It would probably be right up her alley.”
Click here to read more stories by Kari Apted.
Related Stories
Heroic Legacy
In Sickness and in Health
