Tag Archives: Labor Day

Every Labor Day, I look forward to the same small thing: a Monday with nowhere to be.

As a kid, that was the whole holiday. No school, no schedule, just a long weekend stretched out like a gift. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become something else too: a reminder to stop and ask what all my working is actually for.

Because if I’m honest, for a long time I didn’t know how to rest.

Striving.
Proving.
Earning.
Exhausted.

Those were the things that kept me running long after the work was done. I believed, somewhere deep down, that my worth was tied to how much I could carry, how hard I could push, and how little I let anyone see me tired. Rest felt like falling behind.

But no matter how much I proved, it was never enough. It took me a long time to learn that this isn’t freedom. It’s just a different kind of chain.

The rest I actually needed didn’t come from working harder or finally getting it all done. It came from letting go of the idea that I had to earn my worth in the first place. My value was never something I had to labor for. It was already given.

That truth didn’t erase the tiredness or the years I spent proving myself. But it changed the way I carried them.

So this Labor Day, while I enjoy the slower morning and the last long weekend of summer, I’ll also be thankful for a different kind of rest: the kind that doesn’t come from finishing the to-do list, but from knowing I never had to earn it in the first place.

Happy Labor Day. May you find real rest this holiday.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. — Matthew 11:28 (NIV)