About 13 years ago I woke up, had an existential crisis in the shower, came to the conclusion “I hate myself”, and then a few days later performed on this stage and discovered my love for Standup Comedy.
OK let me back up and fill in some potential plot potholes….
After college I moved to Richmond, KY to start my first full-time job as a youth pastor. This was my dream come true. I had wanted to be a youth pastor since the 8th grade. From the moment I felt that calling, I oriented my life accordingly.
I started preaching at 16, had my first ministry job at 19, all of my extracurricular activities were centered around working in student ministry. I quite literally had found my calling and was leaning into it.
None of that’s bad, but somewhere along the line I picked up some bad habits and views. I felt the need to be this perfect “cool bro” youth pastor, and in hindsight my biggest flaw of how I ran my first few youth ministries was that I created a culture where everyone felt like they had to be perfect to belong…In my head, I was trying to hold the students to high expectations with the hopes that they would soar past them…but that’s not exactly how it played out.
I went from Christian bubble, to Christian bubble, and found myself in yet another Christian bubble while I was in KY. It was all starting to feel so fake, and by that I mean I was feeling so fake.
So there I was taking a shower and reflecting on myself, and not really loving what i was seeing. This pseudo “Perfect youth pastor dude” I was trying to be was a real douche bag that I had spent a decade forming.
My conclusion was “I need to find some life outside of the Christian bubble”. That, plus my interest in standup comedy that I’ve had since middle school, is what led me to try my first open mic in Lexington, KY.
I still remember the first time I performed. It was one of those perfect moments. I had a few friends come to support me, and that was the first time I experienced the rush of entertaining an audience and having a room full of people laughing.
“For those few seconds, I was free.” I had found my “Quarter Mile”.
So that was a cool moment, but shortly after i entered one of the hardest periods in my life to date. To sum up another long and very different story, the Holy Spirit was calling me to move, but i decided not to listen and then some time later, God had to really raise God’s voice for me to take action….about a month or so later I quit my youth pastor job in KY and moved back to Nashville.
At the time I thought I was done with career ministry. I felt very lost, and I felt like a failure. For the first time in my life, I felt like I didn’t have a clear direction. To make matters worse (For me), I went back to my old high school job as a cashier and I really felt like I was living life in reverse. I was honestly in a pretty dark place.
During this time a few things kept me going.
First, honestly my cashier job and the friends I made while working Publix. I was to busy being miserable back then, but looking at it now I am very grateful for the light those people brought to my life and wish i would have appreciated them more.
Second, I had started going back to my home church and the youth pastor asked me to teach their middle school Sunday School class. And coming fresh off my ministry burn out my initial response was a very polite “Hell No” but when he explained he quite literally had nobody else to ask, I felt bad and very obligated to pitch in.
I am so glad I did…that class and those students motivated me to stay strong in my faith, and were a big part of the reason that I eventually got back into ministry and went to seminary about 4 years later.
Lastly, in my lowest point, this was when I leaned into and discovered my love for Standup Comedy. I remembered that amazing time at Comedy Off Broadway when I killed with poorly written jokes about Anosmia and the rush it gave me…and I wanted to feel that more. I got involved in the local Nashville comedy scene, which at the time was The East Room, Mercy Lounge, and Spanky’s Bar and Grill. I performed, and bombed A LOT.
Seriously, I was not funny when I first started…but honestly at that time, maybe it wasn’t about being funny.
Getting on stage each week gave me space to process what I was going through by trying to make it funny. I was lost, and this helped me navigate being lost. It gave me an outlet to voice my negative emotions. It gave me a “safe space” to start discovering this “not youth pastor part” of my human character that I never had given much thought to develop.
In my darkest times, Comedy helped me get from point A to B. Standup is so much more in my life now, but it started as a creative art that I used to process the internal ugliness I was dealing with. I’ll always be grateful for that and I really needed it at the time.
About a year ago I had the opportunity to do a weekend feature set at Comedy Off Broadway, roughly 13 years after performing there at my first open mic. It was so much fun and the audience was killer. I received multiple applause breaks and accidently went over my time because things were going so well….I know nobody there knew me from 13 years ago, but it was great in my mind to come back and prove to “The Club” that I had improved so much since my first performance.
It also gave me space to reflect on everything in my life that had happened in the past 13 years…the good, bad, and ugly.
To anyone in a similar season as I was that has made it this far in in this blog entry, here’s the point:
Not all of our chapters in Life are fun and happy ones. Sometimes you’re in a season of sucky-ness. And it’s going to keep sucking…but it’s just one season. You’ll get through it, you’ll move to better times, and when you look back you’ll be able to see and appreciate who or what got you through that tough period. You’re stronger then you know, and you are not alone.
I am grateful for a lot of people, things, experiences, and opportunities that are in my life. Today I am extra grateful for how many of those have come through me getting more involved with Standup Comedy.
