PEER: Why did you start your YouTube channel?

MELODY ALISA: My journey to YouTube has definitely been just that, a journey. I originally started my YouTube channel back in 2016 while I was living abroad in South Korea after I graduated from college. My content back then was just revolving around my life in Korea, navigating what it’s like to be different in a very homogeneous society of people who all look very, very similar. That was just something that I needed—that outlet. Once I started sharing about my experience abroad as a Black woman and as someone who was finding their faith in God at that time as well, abroad, my platform grew and my love for being creative online grew. As I’ve kind of transitioned and evolved in life, so has my channel and so I went from making travel-based content to more vlog style. And then during the pandemic, the Lord placed it on my heart to share my testimony and that is what switched my type of content that I was creating from being random lifestyle vlogs to really focusing on creating Christian faith-based content. I’ve been in that space ever since.

P: Did you ever expect it to be a full-time job?

MA: When I first started back in South Korea, I definitely had no plans for it to be a full-time job. I knew that I needed to express how I was feeling and that typing it out in a blog post was just not going to cut it. Once I did move back to the States and start getting settled in corporate America, I always had a dream of somehow my YouTube channel one day becoming my full-time job or some aspect of it just being able to be a creative entrepreneur. But I had no idea how that would happen. I had no idea what it would look like, the timeline. God has really paved a way and allowed that prayer request to really be something that I am living in as an answered prayer. But it definitely took a different journey for me to get here than what I was expecting or what I would think would happen.

P: What advice do you have for aspiring content creators, especially those who are in the Christian space?

MA: I first and foremost think that there’s always room. I know that it can feel overwhelming coming into a space where there are just so many people with different platforms and different styles of content, and you can feel like, is my voice even going to make a difference or is it ever going to be heard? But having Christians in this space and having a lot of them in this space or more of them, is always going to be a good thing. My biggest piece of advice is really to just hone in on your why. Why do you want to create content? What is going to be your mission? Because I think it’s going to be easy, or at least for myself, I’ve experienced it’s easy to kind of get tossed from side to side by what’s trending and what’s viral and you might be tempted to try to do what other people are doing. But I think really honing in on your why and your mission allows you to stay in your lane and I think that is the most important part in remembering what it is that God has called you to do in this space and kind of letting everything else fall into place from there.

P: How do you balance motherhood with social media?

MA: For me, the biggest thing that allows me to navigate is boundaries. I found early on that it was really important for me. I just felt very convicted to protect my daughter’s privacy as much as I could and so I like to share and talk about motherhood from my perspective, but not necessarily sharing the details of her life and her milestones because that’s not what she signed up. I think it’s great that people are very supportive and want to see her because she’s adorable. I get it, people would want to see her, but it just really has been important to me to impart and place boundaries because that also allows me to be present when I am with my family. When I am parenting her, I am with her. It’s not trying to get content or trying to set the camera up. Like I’m really just able to be there with her. So, boundaries for me have been the most important.

P: How do you avoid this temptation of mission drift?

MA: I think that I’ve definitely experienced that before and for me it came from comparison, seeing what was working for other people and thinking, oh, maybe I should give that a try even if I know that’s not necessarily what God has called me to do with my platform. What I’ve done to counteract mission drift, which by the way, I’ve never heard of that term, but I love that and I feel like it sums it up really perfectly because sometimes the drift can be very unsuspecting. You don’t even necessarily notice and then you wake up and you’re like, whoa, how did I get all the way over here? But for me, it’s just remembering and going back to what it is that God told me to do, and staying in that lane, even if I’m not necessarily seeing the results. It’s knowing that, and having the peace and kind of letting peace trump the numbers, peace trumps the results that maybe I’m looking for and just wanting to be in alignment with God and letting that be my driving force. I think for me that has been a really powerful anchor to counteract that mission drift.

P: In this busyness of life, how do you remain close to God?

MA: For me, it’s been really important that I have time with the Lord every single day. Not just for what I do online, but just for my own life and how I’m able to show up in real life for those around me. Practically, that just looks like, because I have a daughter and she is almost two, so her sleeping schedule is pretty stable and so waking up before her, and it’s not something that’s always fun, to set that alarm at six o’clock, but it’s something that’s been really impactful for me that I’m able to start my day with the Lord. Then also another thing that I’ve started to do that I feel like in seasons, I make sure it’s a big priority, is just to incorporate silence throughout my day. I found that it was really easy for me to just always have music going, or a podcast or my daughter’s music or listening to something. So really being intentional about, okay, I have this 20-minute drive, let me drive in silence. What does God want to say to me potentially in this time? Or let me just see what is swirling around in my thoughts, taking some time to check in with myself and leaving some room for God to speak to me throughout the day with gaps of silence has been really, really impactful for me and it’s a small change, but it has made a really big shift.

P: What is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received?

MA: Hands down, the best piece of advice, and this one actually changed my life, was someone, actually a close friend of mine. She told me back in 2015, the first person that ever told me this, that God just wants a relationship with you. I grew up in the church. I knew heaven and hell and all these kinds of concepts, and the Lord was very fear-based for me. But hearing that news that, He just wants a relationship with me—that sounds amazing. He just wants to do life with me. So that would be the best piece of advice, and that truly changed my life, knowing that God just wants a relationship with me. He wants to do life with me, and to be invited into the aspects of my life and the crevices and the big things and the small things and then the encouragement to do that, to invite Him in, to seek Him, to draw closer to Him, that has absolutely changed my life, hands down.

P: What’s a go-to self-care habit when you’re feeling overwhelmed?

MA: Something that I’ve been going back to is rollerblading. I used to love rollerblading as a kid. In college, I started longboarding, but I didn’t feel comfortable just jumping on the long board after so many years of not being on it. I have started rollerblading again, and that has been a really nice way to do some physical movement, kind of zone out and spend some time with myself.

P: What are you currently listening to?

MA: I have been loving “How Married Are You?” It’s a podcast by Glen and Yvette Henry. They have a YouTube channel as well and I just really love the conversations that they have on their podcast. They’ve been married for 13 years and their dynamic reminds me of my husband and I, like their personalities.

P: What’s a Bible verse that’s been on your heart recently?

MA: Hands down, the one that God has placed on my heart and really led me through last week that I’ve just been clinging onto is Psalm 37:4 and it’s about delighting in Him and if you delight in the Lord, He’ll give you the desires of your heart and I was really researching into what does this mean? Because I feel like sometimes it has this connotation of like, oh, I do this and then God’s going to give me all these things that I want and as I was studying it, it was beautiful to know and to dive in and understand that the more that we delight in God, the more that He changes our desires to be in alignment with Him and it’s not necessarily that we’re getting all these things that we want, but we start to want the things that He wants. So that’s something that I’ve been clinging onto and really just letting sink into my spirit and trying to practically walk it out. Like, I want to just delight in you today, Lord. Like what does that look like?

Psalm 37:4 (NIV), “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”