My past weekend was… a lot.

I…

-closed a show on Sunday night (Dracula, a bloody good time)

-attended a funeral

-officiated another funeral

-and was formally installed as the Affiliated Community Minister of my congregation.

On Monday, I went straight into tech week for the next show.

In the middle of all this, I’m currently at my day job, sitting in my office on my lunch break from an all-day meeting about housing and homelessness, all while Day 21 of a federal shutdown ticks by, making the future of, well, everything, feel incredibly bleak.

And I had to get up a 4 AM to take a friend to the train station so they could get to a conference.

I am, by any reasonable metric, exhausted.

My laundry basket overflows. The only semblance of dinner I saw this weekend were cups of gluten-free easy mac, microwaved at intermission. I’m pretty sure my blood is more than half coffee at this point.

And I have never, ever been more grateful.

It hit me somewhere between the heaviness of officiating the funeral and the exhilaration of a standing-ovation curtain call: under all the fatigue is this deep, unshakeable foundation of peace. It’s a foundation built on the satisfaction of knowing that this life I’m living—this chaotic, over-stuffed, ridiculous life—is one I built.

Myself.

Brick by brick.

And it’s a life I genuinely love.

I am, quite literally, living all my dreams. At the same time.

When I was in 4th grade, I played my first role in a musical. I was a pile of dirty laundry in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. (Yes, I was a pile of dirty laundry. It’s called range.) I remember painstakingly sewing rags onto a pillowcase-shaped dress and matching hat. After opening night, I stepped off stage, found my theatre teacher, and said, “I want to do this for the rest of my life. Even as a grown-up!”

Here I am, almost 50. I just finished one show and am in tech for another at the Carlisle Regional Performing Arts Center, where I also just accepted a position as resident makeup artist, hair/wig stylist, and mask maker. I wish I had a photo of me as that pile of laundry, just so I could show her and say, “You were right. We did it. We’re still doing it.”

I felt the call to ministry in college. But that dream was very suddenly and cruelly ripped away from me when I was forced out of my old, conservative Christian church for “chronic non-conformity.” At the time, it felt like my life was over. The dream was dead.

Now, of course, I wear “chronic non-conformity” as a badge of honor (which is so Gen X of me).

But the years of healing, of deconstructing faith, of grappling with what I actually believe… those were some of the hardest years of my life. To be standing in front of a new congregation, my congregation, being formally celebrated and authorized to do this work again as “Reverend”… I don’t take a single second of it for granted. I am so grateful to have come through that fire as a more whole and human person.

Then there’s my “day job.”

This week, I’m sitting in endless meetings about the future of our housing and homelessness work. With the shutdown, things look grim. But I’m reminded of a promise I made to myself—and to the homeless victims of 9/11—that I would do something that mattered. That I would spend my life making sure people with no home and no voice are not forgotten or blotted out.

In December, I’ll have been in this job for nine years. It truly is my dream job. Every day, I have the privilege of being a “name-keeper” for those who are unhoused, and I get a chance to help them find their way home.

So yeah. I’m tired. I still have a malfunctioning meat sack.

I still work three jobs.

My life is a logistical Tetris game played at high speed.

AND.

I am living the wildest dreams of my childhood, the deepest calling of my youth, and the most fervent promise of my adulthood. All at once.

And that makes this messy, imperfect life, completely and totally worth it.