Is You Okay? (7 page)

You might think a situation like this would cause me to scale back my stand-up.
GloZell, you're divorced and you'll probably need to move out soon, maybe you should take a step back and regroup?
No—it inspired me to do the opposite. I dove in headfirst. To quote Sheryl Sandberg, this was one of those moments where a lady has to
lean in
.

I went into Hollywood and hit the clubs every night. Monday was The Improv on Melrose. Tuesday was Ha Ha Café in North Hollywood. Wednesday was The Comedy Store on Sunset. Thursday was The Laugh Factory a couple blocks down from The Comedy Store; and then the weekend was a free-for-all. This is what the greats did to get their TV shows, so this is what I was going to do.

The next three years were the toughest of my career, but I'm positive I wouldn't be where I am today if I hadn't gone through them. I had taken complete responsibility for my life and my career after Tike left, and it made all the difference. I learned who I was and who I wasn't during those years, and I figured out what I
really
wanted. I met new people and made new relationships that would propel me into the next phase of my career. And I know that if I'd spent all my time putting blame on other people for my situation, if I'd made excuses for myself, none of that would have happened.

That's the dangerous part about excuses—they are so much easier than the hard work you have to put in to be successful in whatever you want to do. It doesn't matter what it is: music, comedy, tennis, drawing, making videos, being a good friend. As Tike found out, talent isn't enough. You have to be willing to put in the work no matter what comes your way, whether it's a broken leg or no legs at all. Now I can't promise you that if you do the work, everything will work out. But I can guarantee that if you don't do the work, nothing will work out.

So please, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and family, neighbors and pets, do not ever, ever, ever, ever let circumstances stand in the way of something you want to do or something that needs to get done. Don't make excuses. If it's hard, don't hide under the blankets. Yank them back and get down to it. You'll be shocked how much you can accomplish when you approach problems that way. You'll surprise yourself with how easy it becomes and how good you are at it. And you'll feel better about yourself as a result.

There is just no excuse for not working as hard as you can to be or do everything you've ever dreamed of. You can “explain” until you're blue in the face, but like my dad would say if he were alive today, you still won't have a leg to stand on.

     
Q:
  Whatever is to the left of you is your weapon during the zombie apocalypse. What is it?

     
A:
  A half-eaten bag of cashews. Hopefully zombies have a nut allergy, because I can't run for jack after my ankle surgery. That thing is held together with hope and a prayer.

When Tike and I got married in 2000, we moved into a new house and joined a church in a suburb of Orlando.

If you are the churchgoing type, and you're still young, let me just tell you that you still have a lot to look forward to. There's something unique and powerful about joining
a church together as a newly married couple. Marriage is about starting a new life as a unit, where you make decisions together in each other's best interests.

The problem is, no one really tells you how to go about actually being married.

You might have a big ceremony, and you might hold hands and look into each other's eyes while you promise to have faith in each other, then all your friends might throw rice at you as you run to the car. But when they close the limo door behind you, then it's just the two of you looking at each other like, “Okay, what now?”

That's where a good church comes in. When a church is a nurturing community, the whole congregation gets behind you. When you are struggling, they provide support that oftentimes becomes the foundation for the life you're building together. When you are having doubts, they will lift you up. That's the ideal situation, anyway. Sometimes, it doesn't quite work out like that.

The church Tike and I joined was deeply invested in us, so we grew to be invested in them. We got to know and like the pastor, as well as many members of the congregation.
We tried to go to services as regularly as possible, not just in service to our faith but in service to those growing relationships as well.

It was comforting, though it wasn't always smooth sailing.

One night, the church leaders invited a special guest to lead us in prayer. I forget her name, so I'll call her Sheila, but she called herself a prophetess. A prophetess is basically a combination of a priest and a fortune-teller—someone who channels the Holy Spirit
and
will tell you your future.

Sheila, the prophetess, reminded me of one of those old-school preachers who would lay hands on you and baptize you in a river. The congregation was very excited about having her in our house of worship, so everyone wore their
best
Sunday-best, arrived extraearly, and staked out prime pew seating. The pastor welcomed everyone, did a quick sermon like an opening act before a concert, then handed over the pulpit to the headliner.

When Sheila took the stage, the entire congregation got quiet—it was clear they knew what was coming. That woman could preach her tail off! I was amazed at what I was seeing. The “Hallelujahs” and “Amens” were flying back and forth between Sheila and fellow church members. It was inspiring. She had a ton of passion, and she had even more oxygen. Her sermon was long, like weekend lines at Disneyworld long.

Despite the emotion swirling around the room, thirty or forty minutes in, I got bored. I have a strong work ethic, but I don't have the best attention span, so I dug out a pen from my purse and started filling in the holes in all the
O
's,
P
's,
D
's, and
B
's in the program. When that was done, I flipped the program over and played tic-tac-toe with myself. It didn't take long before I was completely zoned out and Sheila's words became background noise. I figured nobody would notice since the place was packed and everyone was listening so intently.

Silly, silly GloZell.

At some point mid cat's game, Sheila started calling people up to the front. You might think because of my reputation as an extrovert that I'd gravitate toward situations like this. Nope—this was my worst nightmare. I always get called on in situations like this. It's the curse of being different, I guess. You're easy to spot. Don't get me wrong, I love being up on a stage in front of people, but only when I choose to be, not when someone else decides, and especially when I have no idea what that person has been saying!

Sure enough, Sheila starts pointing at me. I wanted to melt into the pew or hide behind the church crown on the lady in front of me, but it was no use. When a prophetess handpicks you from the crowd, you aren't just chosen . . . you're
Chosen
.

Eventually, a dozen of us found ourselves on the altar, all lined up in a row. I was in the middle. I had no idea what was coming, though the others seemed to know because they were vibrating with excitement. Sheila started with the woman at the far end, to my left. Her words started as a whisper—part chant, part prayer—and then built in volume and speed until she boomed:

IN THE NAME OF JESUS!

And then Sheila hit the woman on the head, sending her fainting to the ground, seized by the Holy Spirit.

The congregation gasped and shouted out their “Amens!” The woman who had been hit on the head rolled around for a few seconds and moaned something I couldn't quite hear. (She reminded me of Dr. Almont when he had his epileptic fit, actually.) When the woman stopped moaning, an assistant helped her to her feet, and then Sheila moved down the line. She performed the same ritual each time—quiet chanting, rising to a huge “In the Name of Jesus!,” then the smack on the head, and the collapse, and the rolling around.

All these people seemed to be in a total out-of-body state—it was clearly a very real experience to them. They seemed to all be in the moment—problem was, I wasn't. I felt like everyone else had been hypnotized but Sheila's spell hadn't worked on me, and now the hypnotist was expecting me to do weird
stuff too. I started to worry:
I'm not going to fall out. I don't think I'm going to fall out. Am I going to fall out? What if I don't fall out?

A big part of me doubted the whole thing.

The churches I attended growing up offered much more of the average church experience. The pastors were much more, well, pastorlike. This was my first experience with something like this call-and-response sermon, or with someone like Sheila. I understood the words coming out of Sheila's mouth individually—they were words borrowed from the English language—but the way she put them together was totally bizarre. I was twenty-eight years old, a new wife, a fairly new parishioner, and I could not be any less prepared for this if you dropped me onto that altar from space.

In addition, I knew that the service was being filmed, and I knew from how people were talking about Sheila before the service started that she was a big deal, and people wanted to impress her. I'm sure some of the people up there with me were feeling it, but I figured everyone else just kind of let it happen because they didn't want to be the ones to make things awkward.

As Sheila got closer, I fell into a near panic. What was I going to do? I wasn't feeling anything, and if she didn't bring the feeling with her, I was going to have to pretend. I did not
want to embarrass her if I didn't feel the Spirit. And if she was as big a deal as these other ladies made her out to be, a tiny part of me wanted to make sure I didn't get smited. I actually thought to myself,
I wouldn't want to make God look ridiculous here by ruining the program
. What's that saying: fake it till you make it? That's how I felt right then.

Finally, Sheila gets to me and I am in a full flop sweat. If you didn't know any better, from looking at me it might have seemed like I was on the verge of being overcome.
I wish.
Sheila takes my hand, looks me in the eye, and starts her prayer-chant. I'm not feeling a thing.
Oh boy, I'm gonna have to go down.
Her voice starts to rise and quicken.
Here it comes.
She booms:

IN THE NAME OF JESUS!

Based on everyone else's reaction before me, I was expecting her to high-five my forehead like a
Family Feud
buzzer and send me reeling backward. Instead, she just tapped it, like she was Vanna White and my forehead was a
Wheel of Fortune
tile. Now, I'm a performer, so I'm all about selling the moment, but one of the first things they teach you in acting classes is the importance of making scenes feel real. In that moment, falling to the ground didn't make sense—there wasn't enough force behind her tap. Instead, I wobbled and let my knees buckle, and I made a noise that sounded like a
ghost in a kindergarten haunted house. It was
not
convincing. And Sheila was not impressed. She went through the chant with me a second time and boomed once more:

IN THE NAME OF JESUS!

This second time, she popped me with a little bit more force, and I fell out in a way that I considered to be believable. It wasn't real—though I would have liked it to be, just to know what it felt like—but it looked real, and at this point that was all I was worried about. There was only one small detail I hadn't figured out: How long was I supposed to stay down there? Everyone else seemed to have a sense of when it was right to sit up and get helped to their feet by Sheila's assistant. But not me—I had no idea. The last thing I wanted to do was get up too soon. They might know I was faking if I did that. So I went the other way. I stayed down . . . for the rest of the sermon!

Sheila sent five other people falling out after me, and I stayed on the ground, captured in the Holy Spirit, the entire time. It was a little ridiculous. Finally people were, like, “Okay, GloZell, the service is over, you can get up now.”

Have you ever been in one of those situations so crazy that after it's all over you have trouble describing it to people? Well, this was one of those situations for me. I had managed to make the whole thing awkward, just in the opposite
direction from how I originally feared. A stranger had hit me in the head twice and then I faked passing out in front of my new husband and the congregation out of fear that
they might judge me
!

This is a pretty good lesson about why “just going along” with what everyone else is doing is rarely a good idea. Faking it for other people's sake usually makes stuff worse.

Faith is important to me—but it has to be
true
faith. No matter which churches I've attended, no matter how supportive their congregations have been of me and my family (and believe me, we've needed it), it was always my faith that was my bedrock. People like Sheila the Prophetess shake that belief a little and bring the skeptical part of my personality to the surface because it doesn't feel like it's connected to a deeper faith—it feels like a performance. When you really want to believe, it hurts that much more to be deceived.

If my skeptical side was reading this book, you know what she might say after reading the first few chapters?

Yeah, all that's easy for you to say. It worked out for YOU. But what about me?