When The Mom told me that The Niece was staying with her and The Dad over Father’s Day weekend, I had to call The Sis and give her a telephonic high-five for that bit of strategy, especially considering the fact that The Husband and I spent both Mother’s and Father’s Days in hotels this year (landing us in the finals for either the Worst or Smartest Parents Award; regardless, it was nice to see familiar faces among the competition). But I had to make sure I had heard one detail correctly.

“Is she really going camping with Dad?” I asked, which The Sis both confirmed and clarified: there was a neighborhood cookout/movie viewing on a lawn where people would be setting up tents and spending the night, though The Dad and Niece would likely return to my parents’ house after the credits rolled on Frozen.

“Well, that’s pretty cool,” I said. “Funny, I don’t recall him ever doing that with us.”

It was a joke of a dig, and one that I would repeat to The Dad, but there was truth in it. The Sis and I have both enjoyed watching our parents become grandparents, but The Dad has been especially entertaining to observe. I grew up wondering why my father had to travel all week long while others’ dads stayed put; why I could hear him snicker during dance recitals as other dads manned the camcorders (even as I now replicate his laugh as The Niece distractedly flails her arms onstage to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”). Now I know that I wouldn’t be the person I am without the man who helped raise me: that my sense of humor and intellect (what there is of them) and, indeed, my writing were all shaped by the relationships at play in our home; by our dialogue and friction, by expectations unmet and readjusted, by shadowy misunderstanding that grew into ever-more-lighted awareness.

Through it all, I see redemption. And whether it’s in taking The Niece “camping” or disappearing mid-meal to later reappear in the window of our restaurant pushing The Kid in a shopping cart, I see that love refuses to be defined by narrow terms or corralled into neat categories.

I come downstairs in the morning and see that The Husband unloaded the dishwasher the night before even though he was saddled with a presentation that had to be ready by today. And as I notice this, I hear (do NOT tell him I told you) his voice carrying down the stairs, singing TK into submission on the changing table. I think about the differences between us, how biology shows that our brains literally process information differently, that this means there is a reason behind what he hears (or doesn’t) when I speak, that even biology will not allow us a similarity that might prevent conflict–but that these allowances and compromises and forgivenesses are gifts we give each other, and that if we demanded sameness (as I did for the first few years of marriage; until last week, I think) we would be returning those gifts to sender, along with the redemption and growth they entail.

One might begin to suspect that there’s a design to all this chaos.

Our pastor talked this week about a music festival he attended a few days prior with his teenage daughter. I turned to TH, slack-jawed, and mouthed it just as his voice confirmed it through the microphone: “Bonnaroo.” I was equal parts shocked and impressed. Later, my friend called, the one with whom on paper I might appear to have so little in common other than the gender to which we’re both attracted. I was weakened by pregnancy hormones and he by alcohol, and our emotions overtook the conversation as he spoke of his prayers on behalf of TK and called me his sister, and I hung up thinking about how, if a rule-abiding Sunday-School-infused hypocrite can be transformed into the grace-loving sister of a gay Cajun-turned-Manhattanite, then there really is more at work in this world than we know of.

And yesterday, for his third music class, TK clung to me upon entering the room, threatening toddler tears, and by the end was turning to me with a huge grin. These moments after conflict, after hardship and misunderstanding, these are the sun through the clouds and the gifts for which we were made. The sacrifices we make for each other, the allowances to be who we are–they’re not compromises of character or signs of weakness. And they wouldn’t happen without the differences: rough edges and broken pieces and even there-by-design opposites that allow grace to take center stage and redemption to have the last laugh.