I DON’T THINK I’LL EVER FORGET MY first hot flash. The heat started deeper in my soul than I thought possible and came right up to my neck.
Why is this on my neck? Why is this called a hot flash? Flashes are short. This isn’t short! A man must’ve named this.
As I lay burning, I looked over at my husband in peaceful slumber, not a care in the world. His hair had gracefully gone gray—he’s what some would call a silver fox.
Oh my word, if I sweat any more in this bed, I’m going to have to change the sheets.
His vision had gotten so weak he could no longer see in any light other than bright sunlight, but he’d started wearing readers, which only made him hotter. He offered them to me once, and I absolutely DO need them since I can’t see a thing up close, but I refused to wear them. I have enough problems without looking like Grandma Moses.
My personal little summer finally ended, and I tried to pull myself back together. I wanted to get back to sleep, but my brain was working harder than a rented mule. Was this it? Was this the end of the line? I didn’t feel like I was dying, but I did feel like my best years were behind me. And who could blame me?
When I got my eyebrows waxed, I’d had to get my lip done too, then my chin. Why am I getting hair on my chin anyway?
Forget dieting.
The mere thought of a donut made my clothes tight.
I was nearing the top of the Zippin Pippin, and I was about to go downhill full steam ahead.1
Before I could fill my closet with those polyester suit sets that the old ladies used to wear to church, I heard a voice whisper,
You’re not done yet.
I recognized it. I’d heard this voice before.
Oh, I think we’re done, at least with comedy. I’m what, forty-four, forty-five, and it still hasn’t happened. If it were meant to be, I would have been discovered by now.
And then the voice said,
That is literally the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
This was the same voice that said, I never took that bet when I claimed stage fright was the reason I never stepped onstage after Miss Mississippi. I was about to take the stage for the talent competition when stage fright filled my body for the first time ever. Before I went onstage, I prayed, Lord, if you will get me off this stage, then I will never get on another stage again.
The problem wasn’t that I prayed the prayer—the problem was that I thought it was true and that the Lord would make a deal with a scared eighteen-year-old and hold her to it. Now I know—God is a waymaker, not a dealmaker.
Years later, once I realized that my stage fright was most likely the devil using my fear to keep me from living my dream, I got busy.
I found a local comedy club that offered stand-up classes one night a week. I spent months learning to write jokes before I finally got onstage. It was only five minutes, but my fear was conquered.
That was March. March of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had begun, and the next day Alabama announced that we’d be joining the rest of the world and shutting down for two little ole weeks.
Places that hosted comedy nights offered free toilet paper if you ordered their bar food curbside. Stand-up was down for the count. But I found a ray of hope—major comedy schools that only hosted in-person classes were switching to online formats. I signed up for a class from the Second City… then I took another… then another!
Eventually, businesses began to reopen, but not all of them. The comedy club where I first got onstage was now a doctor’s office. Around town, the few open mics that were open started at 11 p.m., but I like to be braless by 9. I kept going and studied the great comics. I found a precise formula for “making it”:
1. Work in smoky clubs.
2. Get booed off stage.
3. Repeat until you stop getting booed off stage.
That was my plan, and I was going to work it.
Hey, Jesus, it’s me. Can you please get me on the stage?
I realized that nobody was going to discover me, because they weren’t looking for comedians in the carpool line or at PTO meetings. The fact of the matter was I wasn’t going to be discovered the way most comedians were discovered.
I had been praying for God to give me exactly what I wanted, and not what he wanted for me. It dawned on me that I had been praying for him to make MY dreams come true, not for his plans for me to come to fruition. I’d been putting God in a box.
I decided if I was going to be discovered, then I was going to have to throw up my own jazz hands.2 There’s only one deep ocean where you can find perimenopausal wannabe comedians: the Internet.
I asked my husband, Tim, “Are you ok if I start doing sketches on Instagram?”
I expected him to hesitate or at least ask questions, but he said, “Whatever you need to do is fine with me.”
“Um, ok”—trying to talk sense into him—“but you don’t think you’ll be embarrassed having your wife doing stand-up sketches on social media?”
“Nah—everyone knows you’re crazy.”
I decided to give it a go, but I gave myself a few rules before I started posting sketches:
No trending audio. My goal was to be the visual and the audio.
No paying to boost a post. I would build an organic audience one reel at a time.
I would work to be so original that if anyone tried to copy me, it would be obvious.
I wrote some sketches and posted the first one on January 3, 2022. I was praying a different prayer than before. Instead of asking for one specific thing, I tried to think of the boldest prayer I could pray. One that would open up all of the blessings God wanted for me.
So I decided to “go big” and prayed every day and every night,
Lord, please do something so big in my life that it could only be you. Let it be so big that credit can only go to you.
I posted short video sketches five days a week. At first, my page growth was slow as molasses. When I started feeling like it might be time to hang it up, no more “Hey, Jesus,” I remembered a quote from a Joel Osteen book: “You’re closer than you think.”3
It turned out I was closer than I thought. A few weeks after I was thinking of stopping, I posted my sketch “If the Queen Died in the South.” It was based on about a million conversations I had heard my mother have with friends and family.
That video went viral, and I kept the content coming.
One thing this experience has taught me is that just because no one is looking for you doesn’t mean they won’t be happy they found you. Sometimes, people don’t know what they’re missing until they find it.
Now I think back fondly to the night that I lay burning, when I thought my life was ending just because I’d started menopause, and recognize that it was the beginning of a new chapter. One that I wasn’t anticipating, but God knew what he was doing all along.
So, ladies, let the men get silver-haired and sexy! We may sweat until we feel fried, but our goose is far from cooked. Our hair color may fade, and the lines may show, but we have stories that only we can tell. Turn your fans on high, throw up your jazz hands even higher, and never stop!
1 The Zippin Pippin is one of the oldest wooden roller coasters in the United States and was at the Mid-South Fair and Libertyland in Memphis forever.
2 I call them jazz hands; you may call them spirit fingers. Either way, throw your hands in the air, and let the world know you’re here!
3 Joel Osteen, It’s Your Time (New York: Howard Books, 2009).