Jeff Allen: A Comedian Who Helps Lighten My Heart

One of the things I like to do on this show is to help speak to the trauma, the dumpster fire, the heartache that's going on within a caregiver and help them get to a place of safety so that we can start to learn to let go of some things.

We can live a calmer, healthier, and even more joyful life. Listen to this scripture. And that is a powerful scripture for us as caregivers, those of us who live with suffering, and we watch it all the time. We watch these things, and yet scripture says that we can be filled with laughter and our tongues can shout with joy when we recognize what the Lord has done for us.

And He has. That's the whole point of the Gospel. And that even though there are brutal things that we still walk through for the rest of our lives sometimes, we know that this is not the end of the story. And I want to speak to that place. I want to help you get to that place.

I want to help myself get there. And part of what I do is I've learned the importance of crying healthy tears so that that laughter can come, that joy can come. Because if we don't cry healthy tears, we're going to cry tears of rage and despair. And as believers, we're going to grieve, but we don't have to grieve as those who have no hope.

And once we understand that concept, it is not too many steps before we'll find out, even as the tears are drying on our face, we're going to learn to laugh and we're going to learn to have a good time as believers and as we minister to one another. Now, if anybody else told you that, maybe you can raise an eyebrow. But my resume as a caregiver is 33 years. My wife's had 80 plus surgeries. She has 150, 200 smaller procedures.

Just had one last week. Both of her legs amputated. She's not known a day without pain since Reagan's first term. I mean, serious pain.

12 different hospitals, 100 doctors, seven different insurance companies, well over $10 million. And yet the two of us have found God's faithfulness, his love, his provision, and his joy greater than all that. Guess what? We're going to do that together. Part of what I do is I like to introduce individuals to you who help me who help me do that. And I heard this guy's voice years ago when I was listening to a comedy channel and the moment I heard his voice, didn't know anything about him, I just heard his voice. I heard his delivery and I love standup comedy.

Love it. And that's part of my own journey of recovery as a caregiver to learn how to recover the ability to laugh. And so I listen to a lot of standup comedy. Well, so much of it out there is just, it's not worth listening to.

But when you find those ones that are, you grab ahold of them. And this guy did that for me. And the moment I heard his delivery, his voice, his cadence, his material, everything about the way he looked at life, I thought, I got to get to know this guy. Who is this guy?

So I went out and just listened to so much of his stuff. And that's Jeff Allen. And he's with us today. Jeff, good morning. Good morning, Peter.

How are you, man? You know, I am thrilled to have you here. I am so glad. And I wanted to introduce this audience to you and talk about your journey, talk about you as your view of life, the way you handle comedy. And I just thank you for getting up early in the morning and doing this.

Oh, no problem. I'm an old man and getting up. Plus we have four brand new puppies in the house. So we have a built-in alarm clock.

They're up at five every day. So tell me this, there are easier ways to make a living than to be a standup comedian. Yeah, I was too young and too ignorant to know that. When did it dawn on you that this is what you're going to do? And this is how you're going to spend your professional life?

Well, it's interesting. I started at 22, not knowing that, you know, I would keep doing it. And I got lucky in 1978 when I started. The comedy club boom was just starting.

So by 1980, it exploded. And I had a chance to, as a young man, I was 24 at that point, travel around, make a few bucks and learn a craft. And when I met my wife, Tammy, I was about eight years into it and, um, I was headlining comedy clubs. So I was making a living, but, uh, it got serious when I had a wife and children, you know, I realized that I'd better. Comedy got serious.

Yeah, I did. I, uh, the, actually the career part that, you know, they call it show business, you know, the show I was working on, but the, uh, the business side of it, I wasn't, uh, to, to adapt that. When you started comedy, a lot of things were different then than they are now. What, well, for me, what, well, for, for every comment, but what was the big change for you? What's, what's different now than it was back when you started? Well, I had a relationship with Christ today. I, uh, back then I was an atheist and, uh, an alcoholic and, uh, you know, that was, uh, I brought all that into a marriage, you know, and it took about a year to realize something that it gives, you know, so I got rid of the booze and the drugs and, um, and then began a, um, a journey that took me quite a while, but, um, you know, eventually all roads led to, to that relationship with Jesus. And that changed everything. That absolutely changed everything. Um, I went from a pretty angry, bitter, cynical comic to, um, to, you know, not taking everything so seriously.

And, uh, it was, uh, a transformation that, um, changed, uh, everything from my marriage to, uh, you know, my career for sure. Well, you know, one of the things I do not like is, is when comedians get up there and rant and rave and work out their angst, work out their angst on, uh, on stage. And that, that is just unpleasant to watch and they get applause, but they don't necessarily get laughter. Right. And that's not who you are. Well, not anymore. You know, I used to, I've always worked kind of inside out.

Yeah. I was a, uh, I always used to say that comedy was cheaper than therapy. I got paid to, to to spew that stuff, you know, but, um, yeah, I was, uh, I was working on, uh, you know, when I got sober at 31 years old, so I had a lot of issues to deal with. Um, and, um, uh, you know, I, I released a lot of it on stage, you know, obviously I was getting laughs because, uh, they, you know, they kept hiring me, but, uh, eventually I realized that, uh, something had to change. Well, when it changed and it changed your comedy, changed all those kinds of things, what was the biggest professional component of how you approach comedy now that you're sober, you're not angry, you've got a different type of worldview.

How did you approach the whole concept of it? Well, somebody told me early on in my talk with Christ that, uh, when you get to heaven, uh, God's gonna ask you one question while you're on earth, did you get the joke? And, uh, yeah, the joke is on all of us to take it a little bit too seriously, you know, so, uh, my, my job, I feel like is to just kind of look at, you know, take those parts of my life that maybe have caused me some pain.

And, uh, you know, what did they say? Comedy was tragedy plus time. If you have time to heal, you should find humor, you know, and, uh, that's kind of what I look at. That's great. All right. We're talking to Jeff Allen. This is hope for the caregiver.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me, but over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish standing with hope for more than a dozen years. We've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com. I'm Gracie and I am standing with hope. Welcome back to the show for caregivers about caregivers hosted by a caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger bringing you three decades of experience to help you stay strong and healthy as you take care of someone who is not. And we are thrilled to have you with us. He did, he put this love in our heart. And because of that, we can laugh, we can rejoice, even though we're dealing with heartache.

And I brought in a guy to help us all do that a little bit better. It's Jeff Allen, jeffallencomedy.com. One of the funniest guys out there.

This is who I listen to, to help me work out some of the angst in my heart is to listen to somebody to guide me back from the cliff a little bit. Jeff, you're on a tour right now. It's called the America I grew up in. Yes.

Tell us a little bit about that and tell us a little bit about the America you grew up in. Well, it's a kind of a tongue in cheek look at, uh, you know, uh, I look back, I'm, uh, I'm in my sixties and, uh, like most people in their sixties, no matter what kind of location you look at the current generation and you think, wow, how did you get so soft? And that's basically it.

Um, I, um, uh, I look at, well, just the simple stuff. I take my granddaughters, uh, to the, to the grocery store, you know, the, uh, the mandatory in and out of the car seats, you know, and again, I'm not against car seats, but I'm tired of strapping her in like a, like a NASCAR driver, just to go a mile and a half to get a diet coke. She's 54 pounds. I'm going to get a hernia hauling her in and out of the car.

And, uh, I finally looked it up on the internet, trying to figure out what age we could put her just in a seatbelt, you know, and it's, you know, five, eight, 18, you know, here's your high school diploma. You get to ride home like a big boy today. It's uh, it's gotten out of hand four foot nine.

That's what the record government recommendation is four foot nine, which means the entire female Olympic gymnastics team has to ride on a booster seat to the gym. We've lost our minds. We really have, you know, do you, you've been, you live in the Nashville area and do you remember when Opryland was still an amusement park?

Oh, sure. I used to go out there with the kids and I took my wife out there. Well, my wife had become a double amputee, both legs. And we had, we actually literally had an argument with the guy because he didn't want her to ride a particular ride because you had to have at least three working limbs. And, and Gracie was like, they'll stay on.

I promise you, they'll stay on. Poor fella. Yeah. Yeah. And this attempt to just make it, I guess, fair or whatever, you know, three working limbs.

That was the cutoff. If you'll pardon the expression, but I mean, you, you look at this thing and you poke fun of a lot of things in a good hearted way, but it's just, it just showed the absurdity of where we've come to. And, and you like to look at those things and just draw it out and just say, come on folks.

And I got to ask you, tell me about, tell us about the dry ice in the jar. Oh, well that was, yeah, that's the thing is that we all, we all do stupid things as children. And that's how you learn not to do stupid things. You know, it hurts. C.S. Lewis said suffering was God's megaphone. So anyway, I got to figure, I got to figure, you know, you know, pain is a part of life and we're going to have to learn to deal with it.

And so here's an example. I was a 12 year old kid. Someone told me to get, get a ball jar, canning jar, you know, my mother can't think.

So I had one of those and they said, dry ice, put it in the jar and put the lid on it. So I asked, what's going to happen? They said, well, it's going to explode. I'm 12. Okay. Something's going to blow up.

I'm going to do it. So I said, where do you get dry ice at? And they said, the ice cream man. So one day the ice cream man's coming down my street. I run out with one of my mother's candy jars. And I asked the ice cream guy, you have any dry ice? He goes, what are you going to do with it? I'm going to put it in this jar. I'm going to put the lid on it and it's going to explode. Ice cream man says, cool. Here's your dry ice.

That is the America I grew up in. And of course that night, my mother sat at the kitchen table, picked a chart, the glass out of my forehead. And then my father came in and said, how'd that happen?

Well, someone told me to put dry ice in a ball jar and it'll blow up. So he looks at me and goes, so knowing that you were just staring at that jar, waiting for it to blow right up in your face. And I go, yep.

And that's when he, he punched me. You know, I, I don't know about you, but I grew up in rural South Carolina and we used to have bottle rocket fights. Yeah. I mean, we would line up, we're out in the country, we'd line up across the street and throw bottle rockets at each other.

Absolutely. How long did you have a BB gun before one of your, you know, your friends said we could shoot each other. It's different when you have your own kids because my 12 year old, I had a 12 and an eight year old, they're four years apart, and he wanted a BB gun. And I said, no, he goes, why not? I said, cause your brother's eight.

He can't defend himself. You wait till he's 13 or so. And then you guys could go out. He can't, you know, and then he goes to my father, the dad says, yeah, my dad calls me and he says, uh, can I get air in a BB gun?

I go, no way. He goes, uh, he says, why not? I said, all right, I'll tell you what you buy him a BB gun, get his brother a set of glass eyes. How's that? You know, he's eight. He can't defend himself.

And uh, yeah, it's different. That's what he says to me. I won't shoot my brother. And I said, if you didn't shoot your brother, I'd haul you in for a psychiatric evaluation. I shot my sister so many times. She told her husband, her cellulite was BB wounds for me.

The more you need to know. Well, you know, I got four brothers and yeah, BB guns were a part of our lives. Unfortunately, they all got the BB guns. I got a shirt with a target on it.

And you know, that's, that's, and when you talk about these things, I grew up this way. I mean, we were out in the country in South Carolina. Safety was, you know, and I have, um, I looked at my, my children as they went to spend time with grandparents and Gracie's dad is very safety conscious. Gracie's mom, pretty good. My dad, okay. My mother, forget it.

You know, she just was clueless. I was a force in five years. Well, now where are you right now? I'm at home. Oh, you're at home.

Okay. You're going back out and are you going to be out this weekend? No, I'm a matter of fact, my wife and I are getting ready to go to Scotland next week. We're taking a vacation and, uh, it's kind of a working vacation, but, um, I'm gonna, I gotta go to Dallas for a day. I'm taping a television show on Wednesday, uh, and then, um, home on Thursday. And then we're leaving Friday for Scotland for 10 days. Uh, it's been on my list of things to do for almost 40 years now, you know, starting in my twenties, I wanted to go to Scotland and play those great golf courses, you know, so you got to make sure I was still walking when I got there. Well, you're not doing your act in Scotland, are you?

Cause I don't know, are they going to understand it? Well, that's interesting. You know, it's, uh, there's, there's, there's comedy clubs there and I'm thinking of working one and, uh, I'll see how it translates. Uh, I told my wife last night, I said, we need to watch a couple of movies made in Scotland so we can get our ear too. Well, in the last couple of minutes, you know, a lot of folks that listen to this show are dealing with really brutal circumstances. And I heard a great quote from an entertainer. Once you said, look, I'm not here to talk politics.

I'm not here to, um, get to work out my stuff. I'm here to entertain you. I can't cure cancer, but I can make you forget about it for about an hour and a half. And I love that. And I thought, talk a little bit about your philosophy of what you're doing to speak to the, you know, everybody needs laughter.

We've got to have that pressure valve relief and we got to have it. This is what you've chosen to do is your profession to go out there and speak joy and laughter and, and, and amusement to people's hearts, to lighten them up a little bit, take about two or three minutes to just talk about how that affects you and what your philosophy is and what, why, why you have such a passion for it. Well, my wife went through breast cancer and I know what it's like. For six months, it took over our lives, took over. It's like a stranger moves into your house and you can't get rid of a stranger. And all you talk about is a stranger in the basement. That's the topic of every discussion you have. And there came a point where I looked at Tammy after four or five months and I said, babe, I can't do it anymore. I need to start living, you know, and you, you look for these distractions to just these heartbeats that take you away from, from the the pain of it and just the awareness of it.

And that's kind of what I look at myself. I'm a distraction and we need those. And we're lucky we live in a country that's free like we are and as wealthy as we are, where people can go out and distract themselves. And I've had a number of emails in the last, you know, five or six years from people who came out, were brought out, didn't want to go to the show and just laugh for the first time in months, sometimes years, haven't laughed that hard in years. And there's so many healing benefits to laughter that it can't be, it has to be by design from God.

There's too many healing benefits. The endorphins, which is the body's natural painkiller, are released when you laugh. You know, it's, I don't know who said this, but it would have been kind of cool somewhere in the scripture if it said that Jesus laughed, because I don't know what I would do without it. And sometimes we find ourselves laughing at some of the most awkward and inopportune times, Tammy and I, when my mother was going through hospice, we were laughing so much telling mom stories at the hospice that the nurse came out and asked us to kind of keep it down a little bit. But, you know, we all walked in and said our goodbyes to mom. We spent almost seven days at the hospice dealing with that. And the final phase of that was just to sit and talk about mom and remember the joy that she brought us and to laugh, and to laugh till we cried. You know, it was healing. It really is.

It's a healing thing. But you have to get out of yourself sometimes to do that. So that's kind of the way I look at myself. You can't do it by yourself.

You're going to have to have some people help you. And that's what you do. Isolation is the devil's tool. I cannot agree more.

Yeah. Anytime you isolate yourself, we are a communal God. We were meant to live in community.

We were meant to live in community. Jeff, you are part of the healing for a lot of people, and thank you for taking time to call into the show. I want you to have a great time. I'm no problem, Peter. I love what you do.

Well, thank you. JeffAllenComedy.com. You want Jeff to come to your event, your corporate event, your church event, and you don't have to hold your breath and wonder, is this guy going to say anything that's going to offend people?

No. He's going to say things that are going to help people heal up, live a calmer, healthier, and calmer, healthier, and even more joyful life, which is what we're all about on this show. Jeff, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. They can go on the website to look at your tour information.