Most 16 year olds don't have their own vehicle, good grades, weekly allowance, and good friends but I didn’t care. I had it made: “I ain't got to listen to you or anyone else if I don't want to,” I thought then.
Amazing how a 16 year old thinks, especially one in a dysfunctional family like I had with a disturbed mother and trooper father who had to play mother and father, a tough role to have in a lower-economic area of the South. This 16-year-old didn’t see herself as having a bad attitude or low self-esteem. Her thoughts about life might have been, "Well, what’s the use, I don't have to do it or why do it, nothing every goes right for me anyway." This girl will never be able to make something of herself, and her life will never be worth living, I thought. Wrong. I was fortunate to be introduced to Coach Andrew, who took me under his wing, and coached me during this most troubled part of my life.
I'm 24 now and I have hopes, dreams and most of all, a goal for my future in management. Overwhelming as it seems at times I'm able to fulfill my life now. I have become aware of the fact that my life is worth living. I owe all of this to coach Andrew. He has taught me that life is worth living and making a goal for your life is maybe the first step in doing this. He even taught me how to be a good writer and express myself better. He taught me to be careful of how I think, to think about the positive things in life. His point was for me not to doubt myself so much, and that I have the option to become whatever I want. Coach Andrew has taught me to approach life in a whole different way. He has enabled me to grow in a new way, and taught me to love him. Thanks to Coach Andrew, I have realized that once I set my mind on making the right choices, everything seems to fall in place and even we have failures in our lives we still can go on. He once told me that whether I think I can or I think I can’t, either way, I’m right, so why not choose “I can”? What I have now is real friends, a great job, and a wonderful outlook on life. I am filled with gratitude for what Coach Andrew has done for me, and I'd like to let him know how much I appreciate all he has done for me. Thank you Coach Andrew.
Sincerely yours,
April Lynn
Alabama |