Do you have any idioms or inside jokes that only your significant other or family members would understand?

The Chaplain and I have developed a few. NIEE (pronounced NEE!), short for Nothing Is Ever Easy. It was coined after we became homeowners and found ourselves at the home improvement store several times a week for months on end.

Our other stand-by, besides Randy-Jacksonisms, is “Jah will provide.” This is a standard phrase if you’re a Rasta, I think, but for us, it came from a specific cultural reference: Wife Swap. Remember that show? If you are shrugging in confusion, that’s OK. The details are hazy, but the show would take two wildly different families and swap the spouses for a period of time. It was reality TV at its best (and worst).

Not surprisingly, there tended to be a lot of tension between the spouses. In the episode our catchphrase came from, a young couple, blond as could be, had a pack of kids. The mom taught the kids at home, and the dad surfed in the mornings and maybe occasionally did some paid work. The mother was stressed about money, showing the camera a jar with just a few coins left in it, asking how she was going to feed her family.

The implication by the show’s producers was, if you aren’t going to work to support that many kids, why did you have them? The blond surfer dad, with dreads and an easy going manner, shrugged off the idea that he needed to take more responsibility for his brood. “Jah will provide,” he said.

I couldn’t tell you a thing about the other family involved in the swap. The Chaplain and I were confused and fascinated by this strange young man who seemed to simultaneously have no responsibility, and so much responsibility, and his utter faith in Jah, despite his empty pockets.

Now, whenever we are stressing about our budget, or one of our cars unexpectedly needs work again, or one of our appliances bends and breaks under the weight of performing for a family of nine, we’ll often say to each other, “Jah will provide” or just, “Jah.”

Trying to make the finances work, keep the emergency fund topped off, and our home running smoothly, our efforts may never be enough, but Jah will provide.

It’s said a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, remembering that young man and his tow-headed children, gathered around their table doing homeschool with their blond mother while their dad was at the beach with his surfboard. It’s an acknowledgement that sometimes we just have to trust everything will be OK, even when we aren’t (or feel like we aren’t) achieving enough.

Recently, it felt like everything in our house broke at once. Our freezers were clogged with ice, our washing machine’s bearings needed to be replaced, resulting in a machine that hummed louder with each load until it sounded like a jet airplane was landing in our kitchen with every spin cycle. We had to shout over the teeth-rattling noise just to hear one another.

The dining room chairs’ vinyl seat covers were torn. The TV cabinet door had fallen off after being kicked one too many times. Our portable dishwasher, a Craigslist find that had served us faithfully for 11 years, gave up the ghost. We had a leaky faucet and a clogged tub drain. To add insult to injury, there were piles of stuff everywhere, adding to the general sense of disorder. No matter what I did, the piles always seemed to repopulate.

All the bigger things made the little things that I’d been putting off seem unbearable, and I went on a cleaning and repair binge. I defrosted, vacuumed, straightened, and fixed things. I decluttered, ruthlessly tossing things I otherwise might have saved. Even the kids were vacuuming up Legos, so you know we were all a little desperate.

We ordered the part for the washer and hoped the machine would last until it arrived.

I started looking online for portable dishwashers.

It turns out there isn’t a huge market for portable dishwashers. In my initial searches, I only found a couple of models (I mean literally two). They were between $600 and $700. That’s a lot of money.

I hadn’t wanted to look on Craigslist. Although our other Craigslist dishwasher had been a total champ, I’d had enough bad experiences with the site not to want to chance another Craigslist lemon.

I found just one portable dishwasher that met our specifications. It had been listed four days before and was being sold for $65.

That really seemed too good to be true. Yet just a day later, the dishwasher was sitting in our kitchen, chugging through the backlog of dishes that had accumulated. We ran five loads the day we got it – two to get rid of the musty odor, and three to clean the dishes. And clean it did. I told the Chaplain it earned its keep that first day alone.

It’s ugly as heck, that little dishwasher, but it sure does the job.

Jah provided.Hopefully by the time this post publishes, our washer will be up and working again. It’s sitting in parts in three different rooms waiting for the right size bearing to come in the mail after an inaccurate listing resulted in us getting the wrong size on the first try. Another part was so damaged and corroded we weren’t able to put the machine back together again… and have to wait for another part to come in the mail. Not the best time to have quit Amazon Prime *shrug*.

Our tub drain is still clogged.

The faucet still drips.

The TV cabinet has both its doors again, and the freezers have been defrosted. The house is cleaner than it’s been in a while, and in my search for order amidst the chaos, I was inspired to downsize the kids’ wardrobes so we can all spend less time picking clothes up off the floor and searching for the stuff they actually want to wear.

Jah will provide.

It seemed immature, even ridiculous, coming from the mouth of a flaxen-haired, unemployed surfer with five kids. But at the same time, all faults aside, wasn’t he right? Doesn’t Jah provide just what we need at the right time, guiding us away from the expensive new portable dishwashers to the old, but perfectly functional one, a short drive away, just waiting for a new home?

We can’t all be blond surfer dudes with dreads, easily trusting Jah to provide while we keep pumping out progeny. We could, however, take a page from the blond Rasta about finding ways to incorporate Sabbath practices into our lives (like surfing) and trusting Jah to take care of our needs.

Our freezers were full of ice were due a messed up gasket and a clogged refrigerator drain line, respectively. I found this out after water continued flowing into our fridge and ice started building up again immediately in both freezers after I defrosted them.

In nursing school, we were taught to Treat The Underlying Cause, which I failed to do in both cases. Fortunately, unclogging the line was easier than defrosting the freezer, so I will start with that next time. I remember my dad doing that exact maintenance job when I was a kid – but when we see things as kids, we don’t understand what we’re looking at till later, right?

Also, thanks in large part to One and his handiness, the washer now has a new spider (did you know that was a washer part?) and new bearings, and it’s back to working like a champ.