Coming Home Carroll

Hello. We are the Carrolls and this is the beginning of our adoption journey.

Adoption has been a part of my (Emily) life forever. I was adopted as an infant and then lost my adoptive mother at the age of 4. I understand the trauma, brokenness and pain and because of my deep understanding, I never had the desire to adopt a child of my own. Over the years God has healed my wounds from adoption. He used the birth of my son and my experience as a single mother to show me unconditional love. Then, I had the opportunity to meet my birth parents, who happened to get married and have two more children who were just a few years older than my son, and molded our relationship into a beautiful example of restoration. Shortly after my husband Chris and I started dating, he traveled to Haiti for mission work. He fell in love with the people and culture and expressed that he desired to adopt a child. I told him he was welcome to adopt Miles (our oldest) but that was as far as we would get with adoption. 

Fast forward five years, we are married with three beautiful boys. Painfully, we experienced a pregnancy loss in April 2019 that left us broken, confused, and aching for our fourth child. My prayer for six months was always "Thy will be done." I knew in my core that my Father loved me, that he never intends there to be pain without growth, and also that he knew the desires of my heart, so I would tell him "thy will be done..but Lord, I so desperately want a daughter." One day when I was alone and praying this intimate prayer to my Dad, I heard him clearly, over and over again say to me "she's in there, she's in there, she's in there". You can imagine how confused I was when we were not pregnant, still. I never shared this with my husband or anyone because I felt at this time in our journey that I was being instructed to "groan quietly".

There were times over the six months between losing a child and knowing we were to adopt where I heard little whispers from the Lord. I have known in the deep places of my heart that we weren't supposed to conceive our fourth child, but adopt instead. My sinful human nature was to try and force my plan and not listen to God's because his plan made me feel uncomfortable. The cool thing about God is that he's unstoppable, and he still made a way for my heart to be opened.

One very random day, I discovered embryo adoption through a facebook friend, Laura who works for an adoption agency. It opened up a conversation with my sister in law, Kylie, who shared with me that while driving the Lord had instructed her to "start praying for Emily's heart towards adoption and to talk to her about it. Tell her that her daughter is growing in her heart."

She's in there.

In my heart, not my womb. I was broken, sobbing and also, so strangely covered in the peace and understanding that I had been reaching for for so long. I shared everything with my wonderful husband who was so receptive and on board with the Lord's plan and finally happy that I was, too. Ha! I reached out to my friend Laura and scheduled a phone call to talk about adoption two days later and asked for prayer, specifically for direction and a clear path. 

The following morning, I was praying for God to continue to use Kylie to speak truth to us, to be a tool to guide us and to give her a clear vision. We knew we were supposed to adopt, but had no idea what that looked like. Was it embryo adoption, international, domestic? On my drive to work that morning I had a clear vision of a dark-skinned little girl. I had that sinful human urge to stuff it away again, I mean, God was already asking me to stretch my heart and open it to adoption. He knew I wanted a baby, but an older child? I texted Chris and Kylie and shared this with them, I told them it was confusing and I needed discernment. Kylie replied almost immediately that she didn’t want to put anything on us that was of her, but she had been hearing "Haiti" over and over and over and over again. Then, my husband replied and said he also woke up and had a picture in his head of a little Hatian girl. We were all stunned at the way God was working through prayer with the three of us connected. I decided to hop on google to do a quick search and typed in "Haiti Christian adoption" and the first agency to come up was the one my friend Laura worked for, whom I had a call with the next day!

I went into the next day full of prayerful anticipation to talk to Laura. My prayer was that I would come away from our conversation with confirmation and even clearer vision of what we were supposed to do. Of course, my time with Laura was completely led by the spirit and ordained by God. I shared my story with her, she spoke truth to me, and she shared that she also had an image of a little dark-skinned girl around 5 or 6 in her head all week, before I ever reached out to her. 

So, here we are. Sharing with you, our family and friends, that we have been led to adopt a precious Haitian girl. We firmly believe that God's timing is perfect but ask for your prayers that this process moves as fast as he allows. We ask that you pray for our hearts and our children's hearts to grow with love and understanding to welcome our daughter home. We ask that you pray for Haiti, for a blanket of peace to come over the country to allow these orphans to find homes. We also ask that you pray specifically for our daughter, that she will know in her heart that we have answered our call and that she has family who is coming to get her and that she is loved. Lastly, we ask you pray for a blanket of protection over our family and over this sweet girl. We graciously accept any financial gift you feel led to contribute to our adoption fund, this website is secure and the funds are sent directly to Nightlight Christian Adoption. Thank you for listening to the beginning of our adoption journey.