IT ALL STARTED WITH A GUM WRAPPER

By Joshua Lopez

Many blessings pass by us every day. All we have to do is acknowledge this and believe that they are meant for us and take them as they are given. Whether big or small, significant or insignificant, expected or unexpected, every blessing is freely given to us from our Heavenly Father who loves us dearly. This author describes how a blessing, in the form of a gum wrapper, changed his life forever after being released from criminal charges for the fourth consecutive time. He accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior in a six-by-twelve-feet cell and was set free""both spiritually and physically. With many tasks ahead of him, he describes that change starts where you are, and that Christ is the foundation of it all. "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much" Luke 16:10. Artist credit: Zachary Miles Martinez

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644922279

Book preview

First Take

From the time I can remember, I started my juvenile career in junior high. In the sixth grade, I was first caught with marijuana after smoking out my locker during passing periods. As a result, I was placed on probation and met resistance from God’s plan in my life from there on out.

People always wanted to fight me at school, and I was bullied at home being the only light-skinned person in my family; I was always conflicted with my identity. I was a white boy who grew up in a Hispanic family. They would call me wedo wedinche, which means really white boy in the Spanish slang.

In further resistance that was met during my juvenile career, there was an insidious plague of violence and drugs that pursued my life. I could remember smoking marijuana for the first time when I was eight years old. My grandfather, who was dying from stage four lung cancer, was also involved in drugs and sold marijuana. The bricks of pot lying around the house brought curiosity to me and my uncle. My grandparents had him late, so we were close to the same age—only about two years apart. We got into them and got budded out, which then altered the perception in my life from what was good, because in that era, a lot of gangster movies were surfacing in the media and were growing popular. Marijuana was a big part of the gangster lifestyle. In that time, there was also a lot of hip-hop music that would inspire the great lifestyle of the pot smoker. So pot was the popular part of juvenile life, and the gangster lifestyle was perceived as good.

The misperception of the gangster good life brought destruction in my younger age. I never cared about education and was always doing poorly in school. From the first time I got caught with marijuana at school, I was always looked at as the bad guy and was closely watched by the school staff. I remember always being in trouble in school and spent most of my school years through Alternative Learning Experience (ALE) and Positive Intervention for Behavior and Attendance (PIBA). They were in-school suspension programs for the special students like me who were always fighting and smoking marijuana. I never wanted to be locked up in a place where I was supposed to be having fun, but I was forced to be there because of probation, or else I would have just ditched school.

Besides the negative influence of the era I grew up in, I was also experiencing family problems at home. My mother and father would always encourage us to do well in school, but they were having problems in their relationship because of drugs and alcohol. Drugs and alcohol drove my family apart, and my mother ended up with a meth-induced schizophrenia, which brought my father and her to divorce. I remember my dad being brokenhearted because he did not want my mother to leave, but she was on a trip that had no return. Their divorce brought tons of remorse to my immediate family and crippled the little footing that we had keeping us together. My dad took on the challenge to raise four kids on his own, which I am extremely grateful for, but I was rebellious and didn’t care about my future and was caught up thinking about the good life that was portrayed to me by the era of drugs, gangs, and easy money.

My dad was behind financially because of the divorce, and he didn’t have much money to give us what he wanted, so that brought more stress to me as a teenager. I remember having two pairs of pants and three shirts for all week and shoes that were degraded to almost nothing. I had to do something financially; I tried to hustle Maryjane. After spending a little time hustling pot, I soon got involved into other drugs that would bring more chaos and trouble to my life.

First Bust

Imet someone at my alternative high school who taught me about hustling a compound formed from cocaine and baking soda. I made a quick come up and would later get caught with my cousin at a car wash at the top of the town. We were cruising around all day, flipping dubs, and making our presence known. We thought we were doing big things and getting away with it; we thought wrong. We were making stacks of cash, and all of the running around we did that day caught the eye of the detective.

It was the first time I had ever experienced assault rifles and other tactical firearms pointed at me. The narcotics agents came out of the woodworks as we were posted up under the car wash getting some shade, counting the benjamins we had acquired. All the thoughts of me not having anything at home and now having money to buy all the clothes I wanted was very short-lived as I saw the law coming to take me out. I quickly told my cousin to hide his stash. He was so frightened by the sight of what could have potentially ended our lives with any wrong movement, he froze with his hands in the air; it was classic. I quickly reached into my pocket and slid my drugs in my groin area. I was seventeen years old, which made me a minor, so the authorities could not search my groin area until my probation officer arrived or my legal guardian gave consent.

As soon as they pulled us out of the vehicle with guns to our head, they searched my cousin and pulled the dope out of his front pocket. I would never forget the look of despair that was present among the both of us and the look of joy on the officers as they were doing their job taking out drug dealers. Given that I was still on probation and no drugs were found on me but on the person I was with, it violated my probation rules.

I was sent to Valencia County Juvenile Detention Center. On my way there, I was already thinking about how I could hustle the dope I still had. Luckily, on the way to the detention center, the transporter told me they would strip me down and make me squat and cough. I was terrified that they would find my drugs, so I asked the transporter if he would please get me something to drink before we arrived at the Detention Center, which was one and a half hours away. I had already been waiting in Socorro’s interrogation room for hours. They must have known I was not going to talk, so finally, they said just lock him up, let him spend his life living within concrete, rotting away. I guess the transporter felt sorry for me and agreed to get me something to drink. As he went inside of the gas station, I was struggling to pull the solid rock of drugs from my groin. My heart was