Our Story: From Hitting Every Branch to Spreading the Word

We are defined by many things in life. How we grow up, what we have done with it, and what we leave behind are all part of what becomes our legacy. This is not a story you have heard before, at least not this version of it. This is a testimony of how, in my forties, my life changed because I finally fell into the path God had waiting for me all along.

For twenty-five years I have walked a marriage and a family through seasons I am not proud of. I do not say that to be dramatic. I say it because it is true, and because hiding the hard parts of a story is exactly what keeps other people stuck in theirs.

In the fall-out of losing my mother, my life came undone at the end of 2020. My family was in disarray, I was married to my job more than my wife, and I was an angry and bitter soul walking around in church clothes. There came a fork in the road, and Holly and I took it together, into a church home and into a small group there meant to walk people through the parts of their story they had been avoiding. I showed up wearing a heavy weight of armor. By the third week, I had nothing left to lose by trying.

I will never forget the night everything cracked open. Not one, not two, but all three of our vehicles broke down the Friday before the conference weekend that was supposed to change everything, and we still made it there on time. In a room full of people, I found Holly’s face and knew, of everyone there, that she was the only one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was broken open by so much weight, and I told her exactly that, because she needed to know she had become a bigger priority in my life than she had ever been before.

Somewhere in the middle of all this rebuilding, I made what I can only call a Crazy Faith decision. I walked away from a job I had held for ten years, money and seniority and control included, because I had come to understand there are more important things than being in control. God first. Holly and our family second. Providing for them third, trusting that God would make good on the rest.

Why Holy Bananas exists

The name comes from Holly. It is what she says when something catches her off guard, the way other people say wow or amazing, and it always sounded to us less like an accident and more like a small blessing hiding in plain sight. We built our logo around a monkey holding a bunch of bananas, because the name was never meant to be serious, and neither is the joy underneath everything else we are trying to say.

We did not set out to build a clothing brand. We set out to say something true, out loud, in a way that could travel further than we ever could, into rooms we will never stand in and onto people we will never meet.

That is the whole purpose behind this. Not the shirts. What the shirts carry.

A shirt that says “Need Prayer? Tap My Shoulder” is not really about the shirt. It is a small, wearable permission slip. Permission for someone to be honest about what they are carrying, and permission for someone else to notice and ask. We have lived on both sides of that exchange, the carrying and the noticing, and we know how much it matters to have either one show up when it is needed.

Holy Bananas is not primarily a store. It is a ministry of stories and wisdom: the things we have learned the hard way, the scripture that held us up when nothing else did, the small and ordinary moments that turned out to matter, with a shop attached because sometimes the best way to carry a message is to wear it. Joyful, vibrant, and a little bit bananas, one positive saying at a time. Every post we write here, every story we tell, exists to serve that same purpose, whether or not it ever sells a single shirt.

If you would like to reach out

We are just getting started telling these stories here, and we mean it when we say we would love to hear yours. If any part of hitting your own branches on the way down sounds familiar, you are not alone in it, and you do not have to carry it by yourself.

If you need prayer, have a story of your own, or just want to talk to a real person on the other end of this, reach out to us at jcooperjazz@holybananas.org 

We will read every message ourselves, and we would count it an honor to pray over whatever season you may willing to share with.