Vow Renewal, Pool Water complaints

Mama and I have been attending a family conference at our church over the past several nights. Dr. Hand has been teaching out of some material he wrote several years – or decades – ago on husband/wife relationships as well as strategies for maintaining proper family order and consequently, contentment in the home. It has been good information to hear again, especially since we could attend together since it worked out that I was on days this week.
As a closing for the conference he had each couple attending that night to stand together at the front of the auditorium, face each other and repeat an abbreviated rendition of the traditional wedding vows. It was a very nice touch. Mama and I had no trouble facing each other since our faces are turned into one another very frequently. I do have the feeling that there were some couples that struggled with or were embarrassed by the exercise.
My father taught us that there were any number of persons we could choose as a spouse. There was, according to him, no Divine appointment of one person for another; any reasonable male-female union was workable and could be blessed if surrendered to God. I agree intellectually, perhaps even emotionally, but not spiritually. I do not believe there is any part of my life where God says, “Yeah that will do. I can make something of that.” He knows me and he knows my spouse. His plans are always for our good and his Glory.
I am a hopeless romantic. I find it comforting, even inspiring, to think that he made my wife for me and me alone rather than assume he merely took the choice I made and made the best of it. Either way I win and so does my wife, but in my way of thinking, there is never a chance that there could have ever been another right choice for me to make. There is no wondering. There is no guessing. There is no complaining. She is my one.
It is sort of like when John the Baptist, now in prison and about to be executed for his preaching of the Christ, sent one of his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one or do we look for another?” Whenever my faith begins to be tested and I start to doubt (as may have happened in the early years of our marriage) I think of what God did in choosing her for me and I start to praise Him for the love he showed me in that choice. It always turns the table around. There is no one else for me other than Mama. Praise the Lord!
A friend of mine installed a pool for his family last year but there was not too much opportunity to enjoy it until this summer. Since it has been very hot the wife and kids have spent a lot of time in or near the pool. I asked how it was going for him with regards to the pool. He explained that the one problematic issue was the water temperature.
He has a heater for the water so there has been a lot of discussion about water temperature. When the air temperature was eighty degree and the water temperature was eighty five degrees, everyone was ecstatic. When the air temperature was ninety five degrees and higher and the water temperature was still eighty five degrees the wife would put the heater in service to warm the water which now felt cold to her and the kids.
“Why in the world,” he asked me, “would any sane person pay to heat their pool in the heat of summer?”
“What did you tell your wife?”
“Nothing, I just smile while I grit my teeth.”
That is a wise man.