Just after spring, we were blessed with an avocado baby.

I prefer "avocado baby," I think. “Rainbow baby” has never felt quite right for whatever reason.
One year ago last week, my husband and I were in Guatemala serving at an orphanage with our church.
By that time, we had lost 2 children. A daughter that my body regrettably, reluctantly birthed in the second trimester and then, a year later, we lost another we never had the chance to know. We were trying again but years passed as grief sat heavy in my soul and hope became more of a memory than anything else.

So he and I stood in an avocado orchard on the orphanage grounds where literal miracles were known to happen. The trees, far too young to bear fruit, drooped low with bountiful yield. And we, at the top of that lofty hill, we prepared our hearts and limbs to make their way down while we made our requests to the Most High.

We descended past the trees inquiring of the Lord - our prayers, as their branches, reached toward heaven as best as mortal things can, asking for Light to intervene. A miracle. We were praying for a miracle. And it would take one to bring forth life and, also, hope.

This is what I wrestled with most. Wrestle with, more aptly, as it is still a persistent contemplation.

Hope.

It can be a complex idea. Particularly when life has made you weary of what happens when you grasp it too tightly. When planted petitions produce only “no,” and, “not yet,” - when you've prayed for God to stave off heart break but He, in His sovereignty, does not.

I wish this was a grand story of unwavering faith for a miracle I knew would someday come. It is not.

Instead it is a story of feeble faith offered to the Father, I’m not sure it was even the size of one mustard seed. But I offered my best - though it was the very definition of “not much.”

All the while, a part of me began to believe that God's goodness was in some way dependent on what small sprouts I could cultivate myself - watered just so; prayers offered with the correct cadence, the right words at the right time, and faith with an acceptable fervor. I developed a warped idea that He would not come through unless I came through for Him in some undefinable way. A lie that sometimes grows where hope is buried too deep.

My God's grace, however, is not perishable as alligator pears. It is not fickle fruit. The work has already been finished. There’s nothing left for me to do but believe - even if imperfectly.

So out of desperate times in prayer watered with deep tears and times of confusion when it felt my heart would never beat whole again - what I learned to hold on to is letting go.

Hope was just too hard, too painful - to cultivate myself. I felt disingenuous and exhausted from the days I managed to dredge up some surface version of it. I found out that was because it was never for me to do.

Hope was not mine to produce, but my portion to surrender to.

I decided to pluck the responsibility of hope off of myself and place it on the Vine to which it always belonged with a simple prayer that reminded me to do so, replacing withered despair with blossoming hope:

Hope and Alligator Pears

Kasidy Isahaq

Hope and Alligator Pears

The Speech of Saints

Kasidy Isahaq