Photo: Miranda Coleman / Facebook.com
Tragedy to triumph! One couple changed these incredible kids’ lives.
By Hawthorn Martin — Written on Mar 14, 2023
After years of hardship, one family’s incredible life story of love, trust, and resilience has drawn the attention and support of the nation.
Abandoned by their mother as children, Malachi and his sister Nevaeh were left to the mercy of the foster care system until two adoptive parents were able to bring hope to their lives.
Now, over eight years later, the kids are thriving on the path to success, and bringing their own light into the world.
Malachi and Nevaeh were taken in by foster parents and are now paying it forward for other kids.
Malachi in particular has taken the opportunity to raise money for other children from similar backgrounds to his own, but he wasn’t always in the place to take on such tasks. When he and his sister were little, the only thing they could focus on was surviving.
Tragedy struck the siblings young when their father passed away in a car crash, and their mother fell into substance abuse and negligence. One day, their birth mother got the kids in the car and drove them to a random location before ordering them out of the vehicle, promising to return.
“That was the last time I saw her,” Malachi told 247Sports in January. “I was five.”
With his two-year-old sister, Malachi had no choice but to step into a parental role at an unthinkably young age as he and his sister struggled to navigate the streets, finding food and sleeping wherever they could. Sometimes strangers would offer them kindness, sometimes they wouldn’t, but nothing was ever permanent.
The two eventually ended up in the foster care system, where they experienced even more hardship at the hands of a careless system and abusive, violent parents. One family had the kids removed from their care after physically throwing Malachi through a wall. It seemed like their struggles would never end until they met Miranda and Craig Coleman.
The Coleman family were regular church-goers who had felt a divine push to take in a foster child after a particularly moving sermon. They received their licenses to foster a child, and then got in contact with KVC, a non-profit organization.
The organization informed them of two siblings who were soon to be separated by the foster system. The family had only been prepared to take in one child, but after seeing the bond between the kids, and once again feeling called, they knew they couldn’t pass up the opportunity to keep the siblings together.
The Colemans adopted the two kids almost immediately and welcomed them with open arms.
The road to trust was a rocky one since the kids, now nine and six, had been hurt and left on their own for half their lives. That kind of trauma was impossible for them to let go of right away, and the Colemans had to rely a lot on patience, faith, and hope as they helped the kids begin the path to recovery.
Craig Coleman recalled that Malachi was “a broken kid” when they had first met, and Miranda agreed, saying that he was “living for today and only today, nothing else mattered.”
However, over the years, Malachi and Nevaeh slowly began to realize that this home would be a permanent and kind one where they didn’t have to worry about fighting for their lives. They were able to trust their new family, and even begin to discover themselves.
Eventually, they began to see what they could do for others as well. Malachi recalled a time when Miranda asked him what he would be willing to do to bless others, and he resisted almost every option she gave him, except for one.
He agreed to open a door for just one other person. And then another. And then another.
The small deed of kindness opened the door to his own ability to spread kindness, something he hadn’t had the opportunity to do before. Miranda recalled how far Malachi has changed since that first day, saying “There hasn’t been a door that kid doesn’t hold for somebody to this day. He will hold doors for anybody.”
As well as kindness, Malachi found a passion for football, which would eventually lead him to change the lives of others on an immense scale.
He joined a Name Image Likeness (NIL) deal with his high school football team in Nebraska that would allow his image and popularity to raise money, similar to how professional players can profit off of their brand and image as well.
However, Malachi wasn’t interested in keeping the money for himself. Although he and Nevaeh were able to get out of the foster care system, he knew the story ended much more tragically for many others, and he has dedicated his brand “Fly Like Chi” to raise money for other kids in the foster system.
He has partnered with the restaurant Muchachos in his town to make sales, and, although the exact amount has yet to be disclosed, has already raised “a good chunk of change” to go directly to other kids in the foster system.
“Once I realized how good it makes me feel to help other people,” Malachi told CBS, “This is something that I knew I want to continue in my life.”
His impact is already inspiring the world, and thanks to the Colemans, he and his sister have so much more life left to live. Who knows what amazing thing they’ll dedicate themselves to next.
Hawthorn Martin is a news and entertainment writer living in Texas. They focus on social justice, pop culture, and human interest stories.