Our air conditioning went out last night.

Days after our flipping of the thermostat switch from red to blue in honor of the arrival of spring, the bitch went out. Cut to me lying in bed at 2 am drenched in sweat and wanting someone to punch. These are first world problems by which we find ourselves surrounded, these “A/C going out”s and “high pollen count”s and “diamond shoes are too tight“s. But I had spent a day among the cavity-laden masses while afflicted with the same problem–too little freon–and it was the eve of The Kid’s MRI. TK was crying intermittently but often a few rooms away, whether from impending heatstroke or a runny nose or nothing at all, who could know? The world just felt more hot and uncomfortable and not to my liking.

The fault lines of my soul, the brokenness that runs along the flaws of my personality and points of my faithlessness, run exposed during these seasons of confusion and uncertainty. I remember when electricity going out would be cause for childhood celebrations–flashlight wars and indoor picnics by candlelight; when overheating was cured by dips in the neighborhood pool; when adult-onset allergies had yet to arrive; when searching for answers was the grown-ups’ job. Nights when being among my favorite people was celebrated with a slumber party; now I throw in earplugs and take them for granted. I don’t do well with not being let in on the administrative end of running the universe.

This morning, we denied TK food and drink per orders and filled the diaper bag with post-procedure snacks and toys and books and drove to yet another medical setting. We watched the excitement over a family car trip and new surroundings transform into frustrating hunger and, finally, tears as they tried to take his vitals and he realized this was another of those days. Then the doctor came in and listened to his chest and spouted some dire risks about colds and drool from teething and ended his speech with a two-week postponement. Listen, fucker, I know teeth–and this won’t be over in two weeks, so why don’t you pick another arbitrary date? I wanted to scream at him, in that non-WWJD way of mine that happens when I’m backed into a corner or fighting for my child or just having a bad day. He left the room and I broke down the way only a Type-A mother at yet another dead end can, and TH comforted me as only a man who loves that kind of woman does. And TK grinned as he shoved the formerly forbidden animal crackers into his piehole.

I know the truth that is my soul’s native tongue: that in the defeat of our own plans and expectations is where new life begins; that learning what love is involves learning what it isn’t first, and then learning to bear its beams because damn if they’re not brighter and hotter than we ever knew.

I know all this, knew it when TH grinned at me in the way only he is allowed to and shrugged, “Plans in pencil.”  But I still needed to pout a little. Mourn not getting my way, my answer.

And then, to realize that I have it. “You wanted to fix this,” the voice told my heart from the unholy track of a treadmill hours later as The Mom swooped in to take care of TK. “You won’t be the one fixing this.” And in that moment, the beam of love hit me with all of its truth-baring discomfort and transformed my mourning into gratitude. Because it had just felt like a setback. When will I learn that it’s never just what it looks like?

Then, the surrounding like a slumber party of favorites: The Mom playing with TK in the next room as I write this, texts from friends who understand and say exactly the right thing (which is often, simply, “I’m sorry”). Unprintable wisdom from the SS (unprintable because it’s too good not to let her post it herself). And all that I know awaits me from my tribe: from The Dad, who taught me that laughter is a form of love that too few speak well; from The Sis, who has a way of distilling the emotion out and placing it aside just long enough to get to the raw point of it all. Countless others, whose depth of friendship has grown only through the honest dialogue that brokenness brings. And so we wait a few more weeks for an answer already known by the author, and we limp along in the meantime with the same wounds as before. We will always have them, though, whatever medicine and this world provide, because it’s the broken places that let the grace in, and let us not forget it.

Because isn’t holding it all together overrated anyway? That thought hit me on Sunday, just after they prayed for our family by name, and then the sermon spoke those exact words in a reminder that God has not only a sense of humor but impeccable timing. There we were, TH and I, in between two couples who are friends, who have kids TK’s age that they each almost lost before birth. Behind us, the baby whose parents were told he would never be born cooed, and my friend turned to me and we smiled at each other because these miracles happen every moment if we care to look. We are the openly war-torn, the has-beens and addicts, not the pearl-clutchers and rule-followers. So we stood, this band of the broken whom grace has made family, and through my tears I spoke the words, and just like that suffering turned into a song.