Keep Building Resilience Introverts

Sending love to all the introverts who are building resilience in these pandemic times in the midst of heightened Zoom calls and other ways of working and living now that have become our norm.

Yesterday, I had six video meetings for work, including one that was a 2.5 hour class on African American theology, and would have had a seventh meeting if I hadn’t moved it to next week. My introverted self was pushed but I also built ‘muscle’ from those moments. And I found ways to help myself recover energy between meetings and during meetings, like turning my video camera off when needed, so I didn’t have to ‘be on’ visually, which gave me time to rest. I also closed my eyes during breaks and covered them with the palms of my hands to help my eyes rest and my mind rest with a darker environment.

Also sending a special holla to the Enneagram type 5 personalities like me, those “Inquisitive Thinkers” who have the least amount of energy available to offer to others out of all the other personalities.

I know what it takes to show up, manage your energy and make sure you got enough in the tank to finish out each day in front of you. Keep leaning into these times to grow and build more resilience and strength.

I was amazed yesterday at how God continued to sustain me…and in other moments, even though it seems I’m almost out of juice in my caboose. I read one Christian reflection about the type 5 personality and that when one is struggling or fearful because you’re at the end of your energy reserves and you have no more to give, to ask Jesus Christ, the One with unlimited resources to help you. He is faithful to give to you out of His abundant and unlimited supply and can pour back into you all that you need.

Selah on that.

Photo by Raquel Santana on Unsplash.

Featured Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash.

My Eggs & Such

Note: This post is from blogging I did February 2016 for another writing space. I’m curating my content from past years and putting my work from different places all together on my blog here. Enjoy the read.

Sister friends are the best. These are women who decorate your life with glittery sass, sharp wit, and frequent “girrrrrrrrrllll, did you hear about…” moments. You laugh with them, you cry with them, you shop with them.

And occasionally you talk about your eggs with them.

Yep, the ones in your ovaries.

A recent lunch with my sister-friend Ashley included one such egg conversation. Ashley is a spunky and hilarious black girl who enjoys her career, loves being married to her college beau, and nurturing their two young boys.

While enjoying our food we talked about life, relationships, and kids. She mentioned a married couple we’re both friends with and wondered if they’d started working on a family.

That question led to some words about our eggs, how they don’t get any younger and how a friend told her, “Everybody ain’t gonna have a testimony like Sarah’s from the Bible…”

Well, she right.

After more conversation about our ovaries, she asked, “Mel, how old are you?”

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Photo by Brian Chan on Unsplash.

“36,” I replied as I ate more fried chicken.

“Mel, your eggs ain’t getting any younger either,” she shared, with a raised eyebrow, in her Chattanooga southern girl accent.

“Well, that may be true, but whatever babies the Lord has destined to come from these eggs, He’s already planned them out in eternity past and when He says it’s time they will enter into eternity present,” I responded as I ate even more chicken and dashed on some hot sauce.

“Girl, you right,” Ashley laughed. We finished up lunch. But her words stayed with me and I thought more about my eggs.

In this week of Valentine’s, there’s pressure some single women feel to jump into coupledom and find their happily ever after.

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Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash.

Especially if you’re in the land of the 30s and people keep asking you when are you going to get married? Or do you want to get married, do you want to have children?

But life is not a Hallmark Channel movie where love and “the perfect man” find you when you want them to. Happily ever afters don’t always materialize. Often you have to trade the happy for the real ever afters.

I believe the real ever afters include surrender. God invites us to willingly enter into the story He’s writing for each of us.

This means laying down our expectations and entitlements.

As I choose to lay these things down, the life I live becomes richer than the life I felt entitled to receive. New developments in my story continue to encourage me.

Trusting God with my eggs and my future sounds pretty funny to say. But it’s true. I’m eager to invite Him into my rollercoaster ride of romance and relationships. His undeniable wisdom guides me well.

Lying is Easy, Truth is Not

Writing is an opportunity for me to tell the truth.

Oftentimes it’s my truth I’m telling.

Sometimes I don’t realize this until I’m 200 words in deep.

Many times it’s God’s truth I’m inspired to tell, in repackaged ways but always authentically.

Lying is easy. Tell me who you want me to believe you are or what you imagine stuff to be.

Truth is not. Show me who you really are and be willing to stand in that with honesty wrapped around your waist.

Truth. It’s what we need. It’s custom built to set us free.

So, everytime I write I say to myself, “It’s time to tell the truth. What do I need to tell the truth about today?”

What regularly occurs in your life that causes you to ask the same self-reflecting question? What’s your answer?

Originally written February 22, 2016.

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His Ears

You look just like Jacques.”

I heard these words often, in the smiles and embraces of my mother when she would look at me in my youth and observe the ears, the nose and the likeness of my father in me looking back at her.

Those words were full of sweetness, beauty, pride and love. They made me feel safe and they made me feel connected to a man I knew as my daddy.

His name is James Copenny. He went by Jimmy. Sometimes Jacques. Most times Copenny. He had a twinkle in his eyes, a grit about him, a deep love for seafood and a resilience in him that refused to stop trying in the midst of life’s hardships.

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He’s my dad. I have his ears. I definitely have his smile. I have his love for music and all things soulful. I have his heartbeat for Georgia and the beauty of a city that he loved to call “Ms. Atlanta.”

He gave me both my names, first and last. Melodie was how it was originally spelled on my birth certificate. I believe I’ve always been a song to him, inspiration for him, his only daughter.

There’s a pain and an ache that faithfully re-enters my heart each year. It comes a few days after the joy and exuberance of my birthday. It gently knocks on the door of my heart and sometimes I let it in, sometimes I don’t.

But it always comes, respectfully but insistently.

It’s the grief of celebrating another Father’s Day with the absence of your father. The older you get, you do gain something in the knowing and embrace of your feelings. But knowing why you feel what you feel – sadness, mournfulness, grief, change – doesn’t make the ache any easier. It just makes you feel a bit more grounded that those feelings are normal and it’s okay to be where you are in them.

I can write about a lot of things. Writing about my father is very personal and vulnerable. It doesn’t come easy. It’s labor and it’s arduous. It’s taken me five days to put these words into being. Our relationship at the time of his death was one that was in a new chapter of growth and new beginnings. I didn’t have him as much as I needed him in my early years. Because of circumstances in his life, he couldn’t be present and available and that hurt us both. But in my mid-20s we had the chance to try anew. It was good and it was hard but we were both in it, engaged and intentional. He was my dad and I was his daughter and we were becoming good friends.

Then death came as it often does – unexpected, unwanted and unrelenting. He passed away in his sleep at the young age of 56. His heart just stopped beating. I was 26 and when he died it felt like my heart stopped beating too. With his death went all the things I didn’t get a chance to do with him, say to him, the comfort of the expected in experiences and memories with people you assume will always be around, always be with you.

I miss the conversations that never happened. The ones we didn’t get a chance to get into. I would have loved to talk with him about music. He was a musician at heart. He played several instruments, including his voice. I believe my deep love for funk bands, soul and R&B comes directly from him.

There’s a song by the incredible band Maze ft. Frankie Beverly called “Southern Girl.” This song was released a year after I was born. It opens the way real good music used to: great instrumental intro and a bass line that lays down deep into your heart beat.

This song makes me think of my father. It makes me think of how a good song with the right cadence can make any day feel so much better. It reminds me that music really is a universal language.

Music will always be special to me because of my father.

I feel the happy of the melodies and I feel the sad too.

Both make me grateful for the gift of living and the experiences that come through it.

Mel’s 6 @ 36

What I’ve Learned Thus Far In My 36 Years & A Little Bit In Between…

  1. Living:

Being beautiful means we see ourselves for ourselves. This is who I am and I am grateful for the “me” I am. Be who you are right now, this minute, in this moment right here. Beauty isn’t perfection or the lack of a little jiggle here and there. Beauty starts in the innermost, deepest parts of who we are and infiltrates out through our eyes, smiles, laughter, voices, personalities and so much more until the inner weaves itself indelibly to the outer.

  1. Not Hiding:

Being authentic means we don’t hide. We don’t hide from who we are. We don’t hide from who we used to be. We choose to be real over being fake and we choose to live instead of almost living. We invite people into the gift of who we are authentically, intentionally and honestly so that incredible friendships and relationships can blossom out of us.

  1. Loving:

I am grateful for the “me” I am becoming. I must love me and know I am lovable and worthy of love. Love from others is simply bonus ice cream with my cake. Chocolate espresso gelato to be exact.

  1. Showing Up:

In life we have the gift of living as our true authentic and beautiful selves. Living means we “show up” to our lives and we commit to being in them all the way. Showing up means you let people see you for who you really are and you choose to engage in your life fully. You attend and be present in the life you’ve been gifted. It’s the difference between being a person who goes deep and intentionally with people and a person who goes wide and shallow with people. Do you show up or do you hide?

5. Growing:

I am grateful for the “me” I used to be. She taught me things I needed to know, I needed to learn so I could grow.

6. Becoming.

Being true means we see the beauty in us and the deficits. We choose to grow and pursue healing and freedom so we can get the most mileage out of these bodies, these gifts and these snazzy personalities that have intentionally been placed in us. I love to say things followed by “this is my truth.” Speaking what’s real, what’s true and what’s me. If there’s one gift I could give you this year that means the most to me it’s that you’d know your truth, live your truth and be your truth in everything that has anything to do with you. Live in it and keep on becoming.

I hope my words speak life to all who desire to live, not hide, love, show up, grow and become.

Choose to be present in your life because it makes this journey truly worth living.