Work and Play Hard

Sometimes doing the right thing is inconvenient.  I am not just talking about choices between right and wrong but sometimes choices between two rights.
It happened years ago but it is one of those things I have never forgotten. I knew someone who was a really good student.  They were finishing near the top in everything they studied.  One day they had a choice.  There was a big exam the next day and continuing to study for it was right.  But they had also heard of someone being hospitalised and knew a visit to them was right also.  Both options were right.  After much soul searching and prayer they went and visited the one in hospital.  The upshot was they smashed the exam the next day.  It was like everything they learned they remembered.
I watch Merril studying.  For her it means sometimes forgoing things that are more convenient.  Yet she is getting done all that is needed.  I am so proud of her.  Her results have been amazing.
Sometimes I have to do things.  I know that doing other things would be so much easier and more convenient.  Yet I do what I know to do.  I do not always get it right but I know I am trying.  (That is actually another thing I remember from long ago.  I put in an assignment that I could go on and on and the teacher put in the margin “you do, you do.”)
But what I do like is all things have an end date.  Doing the right thing can be hard but hardness ends.  Study is not pleasant, but I picture in my mind students throwing their caps in the air at the successful completion of a course.  An inconvenient visit ends.  I get to the other side of saying what is hard. 
It is no wonder it is said reaching the end of something is better than the beginning.  It is definitely better when some things are behind rather than in front.  Both Merril and I have commented that our time of relaxing is getting less.  Yet we both feel it is a matter of quality over quantity.
I had a boss that used to say he worked hard and played hard.  I do not play like I did (though often I am dancing on the inside) but I do know what it is to work hard and relax hard.