By Kayla DeKraker
Comedian Ellen Skrmetti recalled her childhood as a church kid, memories that inspire her comedy to this day.
“It was a great small community. I grew up in the First Baptist Church Ripley. And when they say it takes a village, I had my mother, but then I also had my friends’ moms and my mom’s friends that we all just took care of each other,” she told Southern Living’s “Biscuits & Jam” podcast.
Their community was so tight knit that they helped each other with special events.
“The ladies got together, and they put together everyone’s weddings and did all of that. So, it was fun, but it was a lot of work watching those women making cheese straws and making cantaloupe balls,” she joked.
Skrmetti explained what a typical Sunday looked like for her family.
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“Typical Sunday…your mom wakes you up, you still oversleep. You go into your pantyhose drawer, and you try to find a pair of pantyhose that doesn’t have a runner in it. And then you can’t. All of them have a runner,” she joked. “So then you look for a dress that’s long enough to cover up the runner in your pantyhose. And then you look for clear nail polish and you can’t find any…all you can find is pink. And you put some pink on your runner and you just pray…that the nail polish holds it.”
After comedically sharing the hassles that came with getting ready for church, Skrmetti continued, “You go into church. And first you have Sunday school, which is so fun because you got you get about 15 minutes of a lesson. And then you’re just talking. You’re just hanging out with your friends, and you’re just talking to your Sunday school teacher. And then you’ve got about 15 minutes before big church starts, which was your big sermon. And we all called it big church.”
She shared that although she sat separate from her parents in church, they kept a close eye on her.
“My mother and my dad had their pew at the front of the church, and I can still picture my mother looking back to me to make sure that I was in position at church and acting right and that I hadn’t tried to miss big church or go home or hadn’t done anything…I was scared of her wrath if I tried,” she joked.
Though Skrmetti only came onto the comedy scene in recent years, but it was a life-long dream of hers. Her website says, “Ellen had a lifelong dream of standup comedy and was making her dream come true…the problem? That first night on stage was the week before the world shut down.”
But despite the pandemic, she continued working by posting videos to Instagram, and in 2022, her career took off.
Currently, she is preparing for the “Hey Jesus, It’s Me” tour, kicking off on Oct. 28 in Houston, Texas, and wrapping up on Nov. 20 in New York City.
Psalm 37:4 says, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Skrmetti’s story is a great reminder that as we love God and work towards our dreams, He can help us succeed.
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