This is My Adoption Story

Hey everyone! My name is Mikayla Persons and I attend Univeristy of Mobile and this is my adoption story. God put it on my parents heart to adopt after my sister Paige graduated high school. At first people thought that they were just crazy and should enjoy their grandchildren. They went to an adoption agency and found a little girl from Russia named Rose, but the adoption fell through and she was no longer available. They did not give up, and the adoption agency paired my parents and I together. The story I have been told is that my birth mom could not keep me, so she left me on the front of someone’s doorstep and set off fire crackers. That family took me in, but realized that they couldn’t keep me either due to Chinese policies at the time, so I was taken to an orphanage where I stayed for nine months. As a child, I never really talked about my adoption because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and didn’t want people to feel like they should feel bad for me. I didn’t really appreciate where I came from, and treated it as if it was only part of my past. When I was in the ninth grade, my parents took me back to China. I was able to visit my orphanage and meet the woman that found me. It was a wonderful experience and a very emotional trip, but I'm really glad that I went because now I take pride where I came from. When I came back home, I really didn’t want to talk about China as much because it brought up different emotions that I didn’t want to go through again. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I realized I was still hiding those emotions from 3 years prior. I started to see a counselor to help me break down those emotions, and it made me feel a lot better. On my 19th birthday, my parents sat me down and asked me: “Mikayla, what is the one thing you've always wanted to know?” I have always wanted to know who my birth mom was and where I am from. My mom and dad looked at each other and said, “Mikayla, we think we know who your birth mom is!" So many emotions were going through my head. I literally thought I was dreaming. This is what we know. I have two sisters. After having the two girls, my birth mom wanted to have another one hoping it would be a boy. Her husband really wanted a boy, and she was trying to have one hoping that he wouldn’t mistreat her anymore. He had been mistreating her because she had two girls. So she told him she was pregnant, but lied that she had a miscarriage. He left her, and took the oldest sister. She had the baby in secret, and that baby was me. She tried to have an arranged adoption with a woman named Mrs. Leo, who is the person that found me, but that fell through. My birth dad still has no idea who I am or even that I exist. After my mom told me that, I was just shocked I couldn’t believe what I just heard. These details were something I have always wanted to know. Even though I was so young when these things happened, it still caused such heartache. I just felt like something about me was missing. Sometimes I even felt like I didn’t belong in my family because I didn’t look like them. The reason that I am telling my story is because I want you to pray for me and my family. I may have the opportunity to go back to China and meet my birth mom and see my sisters. We have been in contact with my birth mom and sisters. However, recently they have stopped communicating with us. I don’t know what that means for the future, but I pray that God gives me peace about any decision that we have to make whether we go to China or not. I pray that I will be satisfied for whatever God has planned for my life. This is my story. I am proud to take ownership of my story and how much God has blessed me with my family. I am proud of where I came from and there is a reason that God gave me this special story. God is so good and I am thankful for everything he has done in my life; from the little orphan in China, to where I am today.