CPO: Chief Protector Officer

I was a writer before I was a physical therapist. I had a notebook of poems I wrote in college. I can still see the outside of that notebook. It was garnet with silver letters. Strange to say that color, huh? Well, I went to the University of South Carolina before I went to PT School, and our colors are garnet and black. I threw that notebook of poems away in my twenties. It was wrong to do that when I did it. I knew it was wrong and did it anyway. I wish now I could read what was in those poems. Those poems made me feel vulnerable, and that’s why I tossed them in the trash. I remember one poem was about my sunglasses, and how I loved wearing my sunglasses because they allowed me to hide. 

I didn’t know who I was at the Univ. of South Carolina. I didn’t belong to any organizations. I went to class, came back to my dorm room, hung out with my friends from the dorm, and got up again the next day and did the same thing over day after day. On the weekends were parties and football games during the fall. I am a huge football fan and loved the games. Monday came back around, and there I was trying to figure out who I was all over again. I had moved from knowing exactly who I was in high school to having no idea what to do with my life. And as I became an adult, the more I hung out teaching high school girls at church, I learned there was too much struggle for some to find their calling in life, too.     

Words have been important to me, and I think they probably are for most strugglers. We need to hear just the right phrase. Someone needs to help us find our way. Somehow life didn’t teach us all that we needed to know to find our way. I grimace when I hear, “Live your best life.” I cringe when someone says, “Catch your dreams.” I am pretty sure I could catch my dreams if I knew what I was supposed to do with my life. I needed a different brand of encouragement.

I met with a friend to brainstorm over what I wanted to say on this website. What exact, concise, succinct message did I want to convey? Strugglers struggle with speaking with precision and getting to the point. The ability to comprehend and construct words coherently in a brief, few sentences is not a strength. Strugglers need to get our thoughts out of the tangled webs in our head.

Thankfully, this friend has great vision, and she asked me great questions like why did I care about teenagers? If I had a group of girls at the table with us, what would I say to them?

I told her I wanted girls who struggle to protect themselves, know their identity, value themselves, and above all else, believe God really loves them. I wanted single stated words like these and a statement, too, in sentence form. I wrote twelve words in one sentence, sort of a sentence, to capture the mission from start to finish. These twelve words summed up the journey that took me from the day I realized I was scared to live for fear of what might happen to discovering exactly who I was and what I was made to do.  

It took several years for me to move from not where I wanted to be to moving into the purpose I had been hoping to find. I hope you start to find meaning from these four words and the sentence of twelve words. I want you to thrive way more than you struggle. I hope you can discover your purpose with less doubting and wondering than I had: Believe God, Tame your fear, Find who you are, Grab your life. 

I hope you are as happy to be on this journey with me as I am with you!