We’d like to offer you the job.

I had not heard those words in a long time, probably since high school/early college. But, sure enough, that’s what he said. Or,that’s what I remember him saying. Either way, I’ve been brewing beer at Threefoot Brewing Co. in downtown Meridian, Mississippi for over a year now, and I honestly could not be happier and more fulfilled. However, this job did not come to me very easily. I had to do some soul-searching first.

In September of 2023, I finished my bar shift at the greatest pub in the U.K. – The Mouse on Westbury-on-Trym – and enjoyed a pint with the landlord and landlady. They were celebrating over 20 years of running the pub, and they invited me to join them in celebration that evening. We had the same general chit-chat of a conversation, but then the landlady asked me if we would ever go back to America. I told her, ‘I’m never going back.’

Well, obviously I did. So, what happened? The next morning my heart began stirring and longing for my homeland, and strangely, longing for Mississippi. I had sworn to never return because ofthe life I currently lived was truly life-giving and good for my family. Why would I leave? Alas, my heart longed for home, so we began searching for a place in America – other than Mississippi – to call our new home.

Naturally, as a PhD student, I assumed that teaching in a seminary or university was my next stage. I began applying for jobs all across the U.S.A. with very little return on my inquiries. Fair enough, because I had no teaching experience at all. Yet, that’s what I thought the next step would be. After several months of submitting job applications that went unanswered, I eventually gave up.

I gave up wondering if I’d ever find a job, and I gave up the thought of working a job that would honor my self-worth. In fact, while on a distillery tour on the Isle of Islay in Scotland with one of my best friends, I felt this defeated emotion even more as I listened to passionate tour guides ‘evangelize’ us ‘heathens’ into ‘converts’ of enjoying the sacred nectar called scotch whisky. I never imagined having a job where I was just as passionate – and ironically I was a pastor/preacher – a vocation that seemed to bleed charisma and passion. I left Islay feeling defeated and empty.

I suppose those are familiar feelings during the season of Lent – a season of fasting for 40 days in the Christian calendar. Empty. Lost. Hopeless. The cross of Christ in the distance reminding today’s followers of defeat. Yet, while I was feeling this thingsstrongly for 40 days, I knew that Easter Sunday was coming – a day when the cross of Jesus was not just in the shadows of yesterday but taken down and no longer a viable means of emulating signs of hopelessness. Yet, I still felt the despair associated with the darkness of Good Friday. How can anything good come from such defeat? (My thoughts and I wonder if the disciples felt that too on Good Friday)

But it was immediately after Easter when I had my second (or maybe third) zoom conversation with my soon to be new boss at Threefoot Brewing Co. I applied for the job as a cellarman on a whim because I honestly had no other aspirations. I had been brewing beer at home for over a decade and loved it. But I enjoyed sharing my craft with others who affirmed my passion for creating amid the chaos of scattered grains. However, my vocation as a pastor, or at least a very particular context did not approve of such practices. I had placed a bottle of passion on a shelf and vowed to limit my self to a sip every now and then.

But after almost three years of research, living a different way of life, and strengthening my mental health, I finally found that bottle I once forgot about. And during the season of Eastertide 2024, the small glimmer of sunrise cast a bright ray of hope on a grave that had been opened.

And, he said, “We’d like to offer you the job.”

“Yes.” For the last year I have revived a hobby into a career, and I have come up from the grave of depression and hopelessness with a revived heart, a steady prayer, and a congruent life.

Here’s to celebrating one year of being alive and working as ‘brewmaster’ of Threefoot Brewing Co., in downtown Meridian, Mississippi.

Cheers.