Malia's Story

One year ago today a special little girl died and went home to be with her real Father in heaven. I was unable to post about this special little girl last year publicly in fear of hurting other children at her orphanage. So today is the day I will honor her by telling "Malia's Story".

On June 12, 2008, I received a call from Aisha at Hope for Children who simply said, "Donna, you just have to see this file!". At that time CJ and I had already decided that we would be adopting again; however, we had thought that we would just...take our time. Needless to say this was speeding up things for sure. But of course I couldn't help myself but to say...OK I will look at at.

Now at that time we had been researching several different special needs and we were deciding on issues that we could or could not handle in a new child. Well I personally was convinced that my next child one only have one arm! I know that sounds strange, but it was as strong of a feeling as I had before Shelby knowing that she would be cleft affected. Anyhow, you might think that finding a one armed child would be pretty simple, but turns out CJ wasn't so sure about bringing home a child with only one arm.

Anyhow, so the file arrived and I opened it up to find a beautiful little 13 month old baby girl staring at me. It was her!! I got that dizzy feeling in the pit of my stomach and immediately started researching her special need that was listed as "post-operative lymphangioma under right arm pit". She had already had a cyst removed and looked completely healed. I decided that she was probably our next daughter, but of course I had to show the file to CJ.

That afternoon is when I realized that she was the ONE. When I laid her printed file down in the passenger seat of my van to take home to CJ, I looked over and saw my "One armed baby"! The picture looked like she only had one arm since her hand was inside her shirt. This was HER!

CJ agreed that night and we were off and running with the paperchase to bring home Malia Hope Straight. About a month went by and on July 3, I was told the most imaginable news, she had died.

Fortunately I had hired Lady Bugs N Love to do an orphanage phone call to just call and ask some questions about Malia. They were the ones who were told that Malia had passed away while she was in foster care. Lady Bugs N Love then contacted Aisha at my agency, who of course then called China to confirm. The CCAA was not aware of this until my agency notified them of the tragic news. Aisha told me the news on July 3 when I went to the agency to give them my final papers. I was devastated.

Now the crazy thing is that Malia had already died before I ever saw her face for the first time. I suppose that is what made this a little less traumatic than I would have thought it would have been. Yes, it is awful that Malia died and lived such a short life. I was told she was in foster care, so I rested feeling like she did at least get to know the love of having a family care for her. I don't feel like I lost a child because she was never really mine while she was alive. She belonged to China at that time and ultimately to God where she went home to be with him. She is now at peace.

I truly feel like her "file" was meant to be ours, no doubt at all in my mind about that. No other way to explain my one-armed baby feeling other than her file was put in our hands to simply pave the way for Faith to be in our family. If we had not started the paperwork the day that Malia's file came to me, then there would have been no way that we could have brought Faith home! So Malia will always have a special place in our hearts as she is what brought Faith to us...literally!! May little Wang Gai Li, also known as Malia Hope Straight, rest in peace in her heavenly home.