Rites of Passage – Column by Mark Martinez
“I started using drugs when I was in sixth grade,” Cynthia told me. She was a local shop owner who I just met and was doing business with. A total stranger to me, she shared with me this deep, personal area of her life. A very common occurrence for me, when I tell people that I mentor young teens to help them avoid making poor life decisions.
“I became a drug dealer when I was in eighth grade,” she continued. “I started manufacturing drugs when I was in twelfth grade. Over the next twenty years, I made money, and I lost money. I owned homes and cars, and sometimes lived in my car. I’ve been robbed, beaten, arrested, spent time in prison, and had friends’ overdose and die. Pretty much whatever you can think of, I experienced it. I finally realized unless I changed my life, I would wind up dead, just like my friends. I’ve been sober for about six years now and have never touched drugs since then.”
“Can I ask you how old you are now?” She replied, “I’m forty-three.” As captivating as her life story was, there was still one huge thing that stood out to me.
“Do you mind if I ask you this question? How does a sixth grader get started using drugs?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” she said. “I was walking home after school one day, and as I crossed the back of the school yard, there was a group of the ‘cool kids’ hanging out under a tree. They called me over and asked if I wanted some of this (marijuana).”
Then Cynthia said something to me that I’ll never forget. “Who doesn’t want to be called over by the cool kids?”
That was it. The pressure, the enticement, the longing to be accepted. It peaks in the early preteen and teen years, and so many people will wind up making some of the poorest life decisions just to be included.
As long as we live, we will have relationships in our lives. Sometimes, two or more relationships will come into conflict with one another, and you’ll have to choose one over the other. In one of the lessons for my CROP program, I wrote about relationships. I outline fourteen different types of relationships that most of us will have throughout our lives, and I rank them in order from most to least important. I suggest that whenever there is a conflict between two opposing relationships, that the teens (as well as their parents, for that matter) always choose the highest-ranking relationship. Stepping into and falling out of relationships is a normal pattern in life. What is the highest relationship I suggest? Your relationship with God. Every human relationship will let you down at some time or another, as you yourself will let other people down. God will never let you down.
Cynthia went on to tell me, “Tell those kids to never take drugs. Don’t ever take the bait. It only leads down the path of destruction. Nothing ever good comes out of it. It’s a false enticement.”
My favorite part of the story? I asked her what caused the change six years ago that enabled her to become clean and remain sober. “Jesus!” she said without hesitation. “I did not have the strength to do it on my own, but Jesus came into my life and He changed me. He is the only one who can rescue someone who has fallen so far down.”
“Amen,” was my reply.
