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Finding Me Truth #6: Keep Moving

What I’ve found to be true: Sometimes life can bite your butt. It hurts, it sucks, it definitely is not fair but it happens and will continue to happen this side of heaven. Some wrestle with why God allows tragedy and struggle to come into our lives. Others feel God sits on a throne with a shiny thunderbolt just ready and aiming to impart destruction and pain into our lives. Some think he’s dead or powerless and not able to do anything to help anyway so why even bother to bring him into the conversation.

Bite Your Butt

I think the butt bites in life are a reflection of a world that’s in a pretty awful tailspin because of the evil, death and human brokenness that permeates everything around us. They bring with them effects that have consequences greater than we can imagine. God enters this tailspin to give us hope, freedom and eyes to see that the bites won’t always be with us. If we are willing to look closely, we’ll see him actively rescuing, redeeming, healing and restoring.

What I’ve also found to be true: We need to keep moving forward. In the midst of all the struggle, even if you have to crawl your way through it, keep moving. At least you are moving a few steps away from the butt bites that feel like they’ve taken the very breath out of you. Sometimes you may not feel like you have anything in your tank to make one foot or knee move ahead of the other. When you lack the energy, God will carry you. I know this to be true because he’s carried me more times than I can count.

Keep moving forward.

The bite marks will wear off eventually.

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Mamas & Aunties

When I’m wanting her to listen to me or give me something I want or have her stop telling me something I told her I already know, “mama” is what I call her. Mamas just have a flavor about them. When I’m laughing with her, laughing at her or giving her my perspectives on the world and just shooting the breeze, “momma” is how I see her. She’s the same lady that called me one day and asked, “Is your phone — that 229 number — still working?”

Me (curiously): “Um, yes.”

Momma: “We’ll, I’m just checking ‘cause it just rings and rings AND rings…”

Me: “That’s ‘cause I didn’t HEAR it so I could pick it up!”

Momma: “Oh, okay, well I’m just checking.”

She is a verified hot mess. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. My mom is one of my best friends. She gets me and I get her. I learned from her early on how to carry myself with grace, poise, intention and also enjoy life with plenty of humor and tons of wit. She is one of the wittiest people I know! She is the Queen of Wit. Man, she is sharp and brilliant and loving and so wonderfully amazing. She’s been a great mom to me.

Not everyone can raise a daughter as a single parent with God’s guidance the way she has with me. Every accomplishment, success, endeavor and privilege I’ve been afforded took place from the lift she gave me to climb upon steps she laid in advance for me. She sacrificed her needs to make sure I had mine met.

My mom was one of the first two African American civilian employees to integrate the City of Atlanta’s Vehicles for Hire division in the 1970s. She’s an Advanced Toastmaster and can lay it down with her oratory and sharp communication skills.

She’s served as the president of her homeowner’s association for several years and leads with style as an usher at her church. Oh, and the woman can bust a baaaad Michael Jackson moonwalk-ish routine when Thriller comes on. I have the video evidence to prove it. Incriminating? Maybe. Hilarious and will I plan to keep it to show my kids one day? Absolutely.

As I get older I’m thinking not just about the family I desire to build in my life but also the ways I plan to care for her and bless her as she gets older. When one of my books come out and it’s best selling and good things begin to happen, I can’t wait to give back to her plus so much more all that she’s blessed me with through her love and sacrifices. I am the woman I am today and in all the days that will come because of my mama.

We have a regular time to connect each week and chat about life, usually Sunday evenings. I missed last week and was trying to find a time this week to talk. She was picking Friday and Saturday night and I was like, “Mama, I am young and single. My evenings are busy…I’m am not sitting around with nothing to do.”

Her reply: “Well alright then Mel (in a slightly little huffy voice)! When do you want to talk???”

Me: “In the morning!”

We both are a mess.

I don’t know when I knew to call her auntie but I was young enough to know that’s who she was and who I needed her to be. My mama’s younger sister. The woman whose birthday is just two weeks ahead of mine. The breast cancer survivor. The one who shares a similar gentleness and heart on her sleeve as I do for the world around us. The lady who wants people to know about Jesus and uses opportunities to keep telling the world about him.

The lady who has the same eyes and smile as my mom. The one whose kitchen cabinets I would crawl in when I was very little and play in after I’d go around, ask for and get the fuzzy fuzz lint balls in my Uncle Randy’s pockets. The woman I respect as my aunt but love as my “Auntie.” Aunties just have a swag about them.

She’s the same lady that told me once, “All these men who are downloading…this is just horrible Melody, downloading and all this stuff.”

I believe she meant to describe men who were on the “down low” hiding their bi-sexuality from the women they were sleeping with. But I knew what she meant and I was not going to say anything different.

Mamas & Aunties. They are some kind of amazing.

Originally written August 30, 2013.

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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.

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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.

 

 

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Strength Courage & Wisdom

There are songs that just feel like life when you hear them.

Songs that taste like a sunrise unfolding before your bedroom window at the point where night says hello to dawn and heads back to his star-filled hammock.

Songs that smell like honeyed coconut and touch like brand-new duvet covers, soft, comfortable, safe and inviting.

Songs like India.Arie’s “Strength Courage & Wisdom.”

I fell in love with this song more than a decade ago when her debut album hit the music world. We were all forever changed because of Ms. Arie and her melodic truth-telling.

I knew this song was a gem then. I still count it as a priceless treasure now. When I hear it, in those first few notes of the melody and the bass line I hear truth, I hear realness, I hear authenticity.

Courage

Then India starts to sing and I step into a moment of truth to agree with her words, embrace them as my own and sit down in the affirmations each verse gives me.

I’ve embraced these words in such a personal way that last weekend, at the closing retreat for an incredible 10 month leadership program I took part in, I decided to sing each and every word.

In front of 40+ people.

Without practicing.

Without music, so very A cappella.

On a whim. I literally decided to sing moments before I did.

Each of us in the program had the chance to share how the last 10 months changed us and what we learned about ourselves. I shared that the program helped me heal from deep losses and gave me incredible community in ways that I couldn’t have thought to ask for.

I also shared that this song, India’s song, came to mind that morning and reminded me that through this year, through the pains I had to process and heal from I could see that parts of me I thought I died were still with me. The strength, courage and wisdom I felt at times were lost to me had never left. They were just healing inside my heart, along with the rest of me that needed time, space and grace to recover from the wounds of grief that hurt but do lead to wholeness again.

I sang the whole freaking song. Verses 1, 2, chorus, the bridge and the vamp.

I was so nervous that I kept my eyes on the lyrics via my phone the entire time. I could hear the nerves in my voice at the beginning.

But they calmed down and I sang and I stood in vulnerability and in doing so, I believe I found a little bit more of myself in the process.

I found more of Melody in those melodies, standing behind that podium on a sunny Saturday morning in a Daytona Beach hotel where I let my story have its freedom in music and its freedom through me.

One melodie at a time.