Second Chances: Mark B. Hubble's Journey from Murder to Redemption

at that point in time my addiction was so severe that I would have rather been dead than to give up that bag of drugs and he was going to have to kill me so we got into a shootout and was facing that charge and I knew that if I was found guilty of that charge that my hopes and dreams for my future were going to be decimated and I just said I didn't do it and make them prove it I was sitting in the courtroom listening to these screams and it's only the screams that a mother who lost her only son can fellow and I just wanted to reach out and I just wanted to hug her and tell her I'm sorry I didn't want any of that to happen if they decided to give me life with the possibility of parole can you just draw us into those few moments what did that feel like what was the first thing that went through your head once that hit it's been 15 years I didn't know who was going to show up there's going to be a lot of people that are showing up to your parole hearing next month and I was just like my heart sunk because it's like I have made all these positive changes in my life I'm following God now and now it's like all of these emotions and these fears and anxiety just starts to creep in and when the parole hearing began there was at least 40 or 50 people that came in for the victim's family side there three people on the parole board sitting in front of me I can't look behind me I'm facing the par board everybody's behind me the co said do not look behind you do not look at the victim's family did not look at your family they said you just look at the parole board and when we say that it's time for you to get up and go I said okay so the parole board said is there anybody from victim side that would like to speak and I heard these feet shuffling to this Podium where there was a microphone well Mark thanks for jumping on today man I'm on man I'm super excited to chat with you it's been a long time since we spoke we've chatted before in the past I think you came up to Teen Challenge a long time ago and we have a mutual friend in Rob Reynolds man and it's you've got a powerful story man and I'm just excited to get on here and have a chance to chat with you but first man how are you doing how's life I'm doing great it seems like every day gets better than the previous one and I think that's what faith and Recovery is all about is that even during the challenges and the adversity that we're inevitably going to face as people in general I can look at it Through The Eyes of someone who is truly blessed and grateful to even be alive yeah that's so good I heard they say all the time one of those antidotal quotes that are out there right my worst day sober is best is better than my best day in addiction right and that the truth I love those little images they pop them up all the time and but yeah man so rebuilding life after addiction right you came on the show I think we've been connected for a while a long time ago I believe when I was doing the written blogs you submitted your written blog for the Pod for the my blog a long time ago with your story in it and so you've got a history man you've been through some stuff and today right Dr Mark Hubble it you've got a doctor degree and all that stuff but it didn't just happen overnight you've been through some stuff before getting there so man I'd love to hear just a little bit of your backstory why are you on a podcast called rebuilding life after addiction you just talked about your recovery a second ago and bring maybe the audience into a little bit of your journey man well I started off life moving around a lot my dad was in Bridge construction so by the time I got to ninth grade that was my ninth different school and I was the professional new kid so I wanted to fit in and I always try to associate myself with what I consider the cool crowd the tough kid kids I played Sports I excelled at basketball football and baseball and by my senior year at high school which was in Manasses Virginia I was the captain of the football team captain of the basketball team straight A student but there was another side to me and that was the side that the teachers the coaches general public didn't see but my close personal friends did see that side of me and it was a dark side I was an atheist I didn't believe in God and I only believe D and whatever made me feel good was the right thing to be doing at the time so I would go to parties and I would drink alcohol and smoke marijuana that was a constant thing graduated high school had a lot of opportunities one of them being I was being recruited actively recruited by West Point Military Academy because of my grades Acumen and IQ my leadership abilities I won an award from the US Army Reserve which recognizes academic excellence and Leadership Excellence and through being a captain of the football basketball team I got some letters to play basketball and football at some small colleges no D1 schools or anything like that right it what position did you play in football I played defensive back free safety kick return PT return got some speed and I like to hit people that was my one of my ways of letting out my stress and frustration my father was an alcoholic and worked all day and every evening he would eat dinner and then just drink himself into passing out and my mom and I would sometimes have to help him get up the stairs to put him in the bed and then 5:30 the next morning he was doing it again and I didn't really have much relationship with him and I always thought that if I got good enough at sports that my dad would be impressed and I was trying to gain his acceptance and love and I thought well he was a great athlete if I become a great athlete he'll come to see my games and I can literally count on one hand the number of games over my entire childhood hundreds and hundreds of games over three different sports that he actually showed up to because like I said he's an alcoholic so I realized that trying to gain his acceptance was losing sight of who I really was and coping with that like I like to hit people and that was one of my things and when West Point was recruiting me I started to think about do I really want that to be my college experience that I'm getting up at 5:00 amm doing Cadence drills and being yelled at because I know that I've read stories about Cadets freshman years is really rough and I just didn't want to have to put up with that and I knew that it was going to get in the way of my drinking and using drugs and trying to hook up with girls that was another thing that I was trying to do in college so I declined the West Point and I went to a small College in West name it's just a small College in West Virginia they're all pretty much the same and I could have walked onto the football team probably but I just said I'm devoting this time to just me I'll get my grades I'll party all the time no accountability no parents no sports that I have to be sober for to play well and that life led me to trying harder drugs and I eventually got hooked on cocaine and by my senior year I was in the downward spiral of a serious cocaine addiction I'd lost about 40 lbs and it's a much more expensive drug so to start selling to support my habit and harder drugs you got more dangerous situations that can present themselves and I came back from a trip one night and I was doing my usual thing where I was going to different customers houses and weighing the drugs out and selling it to them and one of my customers who i' had been dealing with for quite a while and I thought we were pretty good friends he got in his mind that he was going to rob me at gunpoint for my drugs and money and at that point in time my addiction was so severe that I would have rather been dead than to give up that bag of drugs and he was GNA have to kill me so we got into a shootout and unfortunately he died and I was left with a huge mess to clean up so I tried to C things up and over the next four months my life just got worse and now every time the door knocked every time the phone rang I was paranoid I thought that was the police they had discovered something and were coming to arrest me so there was no peace in living that life and then eventually the truth caught up and in September of 2000 I was arrested and charg with the crime of murder extradited to West Virginia and I wouldn't see Freedom again for another 16 years so that's what led up to my addiction leading to some very severe consequences yeah so going back still living like an idiot yeah so going back right you mentioned your father struggle with alcoholism and watching that growing up and from people that I've talked to throughout the years like there seems to be one or two extremes right you have the kids that see the alcoholism and they're like I'm just never touch ing that and it becomes a motivator to never go down that road but then there's the opposite where it's like this repeating pattern you see it and then we end up doing it right and so for you like what I know you said identity and acceptance right but after seeing that growing up what was the mindset when you started drinking and you started using that did you think that you weren't going to become like that or were you thinking that this is just Destiny so I'm just going to copy the patterns that I'm seeing in my home anyways I think he normalized it because he worked and provided for the family and he wasn't abusive he wasn't violent he didn't beat me or anything like that it was more distance and I don't want to go as far as to say neglect because I respected the man and he was a man who should be respected and he was a great leader in the household and with the men that he worked with he definitely he was a project manager for Bridge construction so he started from the bottom all the way from a laborer and this is when I was growing up we lived in some pretty impoverished neighborhoods because he knew we weren't going to be there for more than a year once the bridge was done we're going to have to pack up and move to a new place so why not just find the cheapest place and live there and like I said I grew up in some pretty rough areas and that environment everything seemed to be normal it was normal to see people smoking marijuana it was normal to see people drinking all the time and I think that's why I followed that path and that pattern whereas my sister like you said was the extreme opposite she saw a problem and she founded that she wasn't going to subject herself to being that way and she's a elementary school teacher by the way my major in college was a secondary education my plan was to be a high school history teacher and Coach Sports though that was a plan obvious ly with felony murder I am no longer qualified to work in the public school system but yeah that doesn't mean that I can't help people and talk to kids and that's one of the parts of my testimoni you he about later but that was the pattern so you mentioned so it was normalized you saw it not only your dad you mentioned your dad functioned right he was doing everything else well taking care of the family provid in and so it's like well it's not that big of it's not dad seems to be maintaining right and so I'm sure in your mind just like anybody else it wasn't there was never this logical conclusion that the drinking on the weekends was going to lead up to you facing a murder rat right and so Dad's doing all right he's drinking it's fine I'll be all right too and so let's talk about that charge though you ended up facing down some serious prison time you said 16 years you didn't see freedom and so tell us what that Journey was like man when you ended up at the courthouse and you I imagine there was a trial and all of that you went through I don't know did you plead guilty and like what did that feel like that moment when you realized that your freedom was getting ready to be taken away from you for a substantial amount of time and how did yeah we'll start there and then we can ask a little bit more about the journey to facei played the denial game like I said I was living a double life and being arrested and charge with that of course everybody was shocked except for the people who knew me really well and I was facing that charge and I knew that if I was found guilty of that charge that my hopes and dreams for my future were going to be decimated and I just said I didn't do it and make them prove it well there were some people that came forward and testified that I had confessed to the crime which I actually did the next two guys that house I went to after it happened I said you're not going to believe what just happened I'd been dealing with these guys for four or five years and they were like wow man that's crazy so later on a few months later their house got raided by the DEA and their lawyers said you're about to do some serious fed time unless you can either roll over on a Kingpin or something major that the police don't know and they saidwell we know about this unsolved murder that happened a few months back we know who did it and so that got the ball rolling so during the trial the victim's mother she got on the stand and apparently she had been talking to him before he tried to rob me on the phone and he said he was going to call her back well they hung up our situation occurred he didn't call back so she tried calling him and she said whoever knocked on his door or is the one who killed him and things started to line up and the jury believed that was the case and with the other Witnesses but when the victim's mother got off the stand she had an emotional breakdown of Epic Proportions where she was crying she was screaming it was echoing throughout the courtroom they had to remove the jury because it was such a cataclysmic event and they had to call the hospital ambulance to come out and take her to the hospital because she was hyperventilating she couldn't breathe and I was sitting in the courtroom listening to these screams and it's only the screams that a mother who lost her only son can fellow and I just wanted to reach out and I just wanted to hug her and tell her I'm sorry I didn't want any of that to happen and but I had to sit there and take it because I couldn't just openly confess yes it was me but it was self-defense he nobody's trying to hear that so I didn't want to come clean at all even if it meant I was going to do less time it still meant I was going to do sometime and I didn't want to have to face any time and that was my position so the jury found me guilty and they had two options either give me life without parole or life with the possibility of parole and I guess they can they figured well I'm a college kid maybe I have a chance to change we were both involved in drugs because it was shown in the court that he was also involved in drugs and that he was living that lifestyle as well and then once they decided to give me life with the possibility of parole so I knew that I was have going to have to serve at least 15 years in the state of West Virginia before I even had the opportunity to see the parole board and even then they still don't have to grant me parole so I fell into a deep depression after that and of course I'm in jail getting ready to go to prison supermax prison in West Virginia and I'm like well I got to start adapting to this lifestyle so I started Living the hardcore convict lifestyle and from that point on I was just doing whatever I felt like doing and trying to fit in with like I was back in school again trying to fit in with the tough guys and the cool guys lifting weights playing cards I was running gambling operations no thought of changing whatsoever I knew I had a problem but I was always like well I could have quit drugs and alcohol anytime I wanted to I just didn't want to and because of that I was offered drugs and alcohol while I was inside but because it was such a small amount and because I'm such a severe addict and alcoholic I turned it down because I'm like well you're offer me a cup of some jailhouse wine if there's not a barrel behind that cup and I can't get drunk every day all day long then I'm not going to drink that first cup so there was no thought of becoming sober I was just like what they would consider a dry drunk white knuckling it just not doing it and from that point on I ran into some problems I got into some fights I got some write ups went to solitary confinement on a few occasions and the last time I went to solitary confinement was in 2005 i' gotten a write up because they had done a urine sample test in the prison and I was clean but I just couldn't go in the cup I don't know what it was like my bladder something was not working properly I was trying to go and just nothing was coming out and there's a time limmit and if you can't go within that time limit they just give you a class one write up as if you are dirty so I had to do 60 days for that but because of that write up and it was related to drugs because it was a drug test I was recommended to take a treatment program inside the prison it was a year-long substance abuse treatment program which I tried to fight tooth and nail but the parole board it's like they sent this letter and recommend you take this program so I have to do what the parole board says they're my only way out so during the course of taking that program started to open my mind up when you mentioned the sentencing how much time did they give you after like when you initially got sentence what did that look like I just wanted to make sure I have context for the next couple questions well the sentence was life with parole and that means that I have to serve a minimum of 15 years before I have a chance to see the parole board there's no discharge date it's not like after 30 years they have to let me go or anything like that it's complete life sentence so it's all determined by the parole board whether they think I'm fit to reenter Society so I had gotten in some trouble and because of that I was recommended to take this drug and alcohol treatment program I was just going to jump through the Hoops but while I was in that program I started hearing people talking about their addiction and their lifestyle and it was really hitting home and I said okay I'm gonna give this a shot so I was able to you describe that for a second though what that felt like just the I imagine it being in the courtroom you mentioned earlier you're in this place denial right trying to fight through this like I you my best course of action is just to act like it didn't happen rather than taking ownership of it and there was a lot going on and you mentioned the story of the mom and the emotions of all of that and you said you wanted to go up and give her a big hug so of course there's something going on your heart on the inside I would imagine at that point because you're just dealing with all of this and then to get to the end of the trial and have the judge Dro that sentence of life without parole can you just draw us into those few moments for just like what did that feel like what was the first thing that went through your head once that hit because that's a that's that's you that's a big deal right facing that down and I don't have to tell you Liv it but complete Detachment would probably be the best way to describe that I completely detached from reality I was in utter shock and I was having a hard time swallowing that pill of truth that I was not going to see freedom for at least another 15 years and seeing that far ahead was impossible for me so I just like I said I sunk into a deep depression I started Living the convict lifestyle and that led up to that treatment program and I started to work the 12 steps and I'm like wow seven out of these 12 steps refer to God how am I supposed to work I don't even believe in God and a friend of mine named Christopher Davis he said don't worry about God's doing just fine you just keep doing the best you can working these steps and eventually you'll be contacted yeah and I was like what do you mean contacted yeah he's like God's Gonna contact you he's like I saw it I saw a vision of you up on a stage you were preaching and I just laughed I said well I said there's no way I was like I don't believe in God and even if I did I wouldn't be a preacher and it was just like all these impossible scenarios that was not going to happen at in my mind at that point in time and then I was contacted I had a powerful spiritual encounter in my cell in 2009 in March and it was so powerful I was a Christ encounter that's the only way I can describe it and I went from totally being an atheist to the next day totally believ in and how did that encounter materialize were you you mentioned you're hearing things right from different people your buddy said don't worry God's going to contact you but what did that look like in the prison cell man when you're that encounter with the Lord all right I'll break it down I was very sick I had what was not known at that time but was the H1N1 flu and that was sweeping across the country in 2008 2009 apparently a staff member visitor brought it in and I was so sick I probably lost about 10 pounds in three days couldn't keep anything down didn't wanting to eat anything and I asked to go to Medical but you got to fill out request form and it takes a while and so I laay down in my cell on the bunk which is about two and a half feet off the ground and I went to sleep and when I did at some point I was surrounded by this look like this mist and there was a hand reaching out to me through the Mist but I couldn't see whose hand it was and I got scared and I was like is am I dead is this God is this Jesus and so I turned around to run away from the hand and when I did I came to and I was face down on the floor in my cell and I started gasping for air as if I had not been breathing like I had flatlined or something and when I started gasping for air I started hyperventilating and eventually after a few minutes I was able to like catch my breath and breathe normally but what I had taken away from that experience was that maybe I did Flatline maybe I did cross over or was in some type of limbo area and all I could remember was that hand reaching out to me and it was like I wasn't afraid it was like a hand of love like wow here take my hand you're you're struggling right now I love you and when I turned it was like here's your second chance here's your chance to do this life thing over and to have it with this new lens that you're looking through that God is real that God exists and he loves you he doesn't want to punish I get people all these times like God would God hates me this and that I'm like no he loves you like a father loves you he like but when you do wrong he's not going to be happy about it and you need to face consequences how else do you learn unless you face consequences and I'm looking around me I'm like I'm facing the serious most serious consequences you can face I'm separated from the world and here I am in this extremely negative harsh environment and yet I had this like this part of my heart that had been closed off for so long was now open I was open to receiving anything good and not trying to block it off or set up walls which I had done to protect my myself now was like God I'm here whatever you want whatever you need for me I'm here I will do whatever you want me to do and that's when I believe that the calling had taken place and I went to Medical of course they had to take me to the medical unit because right of everything that happened and the co looked at me I'm seeing visions I was no it was just like yeah people can call a hallucination or whatever I know what I know and that's good enough for me all right K speculate or say whatever they want to say and I'm totally fine with that like that's that's your view whatever but I know what I felt and it was real it was real enough for an atheist to believe in God so that's real enough for me and so they took me to medical and they like they gave me fluids and they were looking at my Vital Signs and they're like I'm surprised you're even alive and I was like I think I might have flatlines I said from what happened and they were like that's a very good possibility because this flu has been killing strong young healthy people like so I after that it was like where's the church where's the Bible study at I'm reading a Bible and then that Journey took me to further my education I said well since I can't complete college and be a teacher I can at least learn more about the word of God so I'm G to take these courses they had these correspondence Bible study courses and then they had there was an actual College B Revelation Message Bible College that offered scholarships to inmates so I completed that they took my transfer credits from college and then I completed that degree and then they said we're so impressed with your work that we think you'd be a good candidate for our Seminary the Jacksonville Theological Seminary where you can further your education you get a master's degree and if you complete that then next in line is the doctorate and over the next five years I was able to complete all that submit my thesis and yeah get the doctorate in the field of ministry and I see Christopher Davis and he said hey remember when you said that you weren't going to be a preacher and look at you now and that was it that was like that's what I want to do I want to share the message I want to share the good news and so take us into some of that inner work right because you have this experience with the Lord you hear the call and you start responding in obedience right God speaks to you and in the cell through this incredible God experience and I love that how you said it's the love of God that draws us sin and scripture says that it's the goodness of God right that leads people to repentance and I think there's a lot of that we think that God's just sitting up there waiting like the angry care with the magnifying glass waiting to burn us up as soon as we make a mistake and the reality is that he doesn't have to do that CU our natural consequences of sin they're pretty good discipline all on its own and so God does love us and wants to draw us back in but well there is a there's a verse in Scripture that said God disciplines those he loves and I always say well God must have loved me a lot because some serious discipline and I have a sense of humor about it and that's one thing that I was able to maintain was to have a sense of humor and to maintain a positive attitude and a negative place and while I thought well maybe I'm going to lose the respect of some of my peers because I'm going this Christian path it was actually the opposite I they actually like it seemed like they respected me even more that I was willing to walk this walk inside that place without concern about what other people think about me because at that point in time I'm like I don't care what anybody thinks about me it's God opinion is the only one that I'm concerned with right now and I'm trying to please him and doing things to please him so fast forward that inner work was reading scripture every day I was attending the support groups I was talking about things I was opening up and one of the Steps step four talks about going back in your past and seeing where the pain was coming from why did I want a drink to begin with why did I want to use drugs to begin with what was so wrong with my reality that I wanted to escape it and it was that point that I came to the realization that it was early childhood trauma and social anxiety that was a result of that trauma and me trying to relax and calm my nerves around people I'm I'm not very comfortable around people the feelings I still have to this day but I can override those feelings and let my faith take over and be strong in those moments instead of just avoiding crowds parties people I just it's like I bite my lip and I jump in and swim now instead of running away and hiding so what is it what the Lord constantly calling introverts to Ministry I have no idea but it's like I never had a problem getting up in front of a group of people and speaking because there's no personal interaction in that type of communication it's like give me a thousand people I will speak no nerves no problem where other people are terrified to do that but they'll go up to anybody on any stranger and just strike up a conversation with them I'm like do that how do you just I feel like and that's the childhood trauma that's the Early Childhood stuff I felt like I was bothering people I felt like I was an annoyance and I didn't want to in intrude on somebody else's personal space or in their life and I didn't want to get intimate with anybody and that how did you get there mentally right like I because I know sometimes the memories and stuff from the past they're hard to recall and hard to identify like what sparked all this off right and so you said you got to that place of childhood trauma and was that something like the Lord revealed to you through the word or just looking through your past and unpacking things like how did you get there to realize that was what was causing you to ultimately turn to the alcohol it was a combination of a lot of things the spiritual guidance was there to allow me to go back and really examine my childhood from a perspective of an adult a rational adult mind kids are great observers but they're lousy interpreters like if Mom and Dad are having an argument about paying for my league football then as a kid I think I'm the reason right so I go to Mom and Dad and say what I think I'm going to take this season off I really don't want to play football this fall I'm like 12 years old I really want to play football are you sure yeah well they had no idea I heard that fight that they were having and that argument over money and I was like I don't want to like be a burden on them and it had nothing to do with me personally it was their stuff it was their issues between each other and how they're budgeting their money and their finances and I felt like I was the cause my parents got divorced I felt like in some way I was a reason for that and earlier on ways that they disciplined me caused me to believe that I was annoying that I was hyperactive and dad wants to rest and relax when he gets home from work I want to play and I didn't know how to be calm in those moments so the way they disciplined me it made me realize and think that oh well I must just be this most annoying hyperactive person and people don't want to be around me and that wasn't the case at all it was just they were doing the best they could with what they had and yeah that was their method of trying to teach me and discipline me like I said it was no physical abuse or anything like that but it was something that was stuck and I was like it makes so much sense that because I have that false belief it leads to this feeling and it leads to me acting in this way so being around people the only way I could call my nerves and socialize was to drink to escape from my current reality enter into a new reality where hey all my inhibitions are gone I feel great hey what's going on how you doing and but I can't sustain that for the rest of my life I can't just constantly just be throwing shots back if I got a meeting at work or something or if I got to be around other people no something has to change but it was through finding the root causes of my addiction and where it stemmed from instead of just trying to deal with the symptoms after they occur and just oh I just I shouldn't do that well why did I do it to begin with and that's the big question so I got to that realization and that acceptance and that could be painful right starting to dig into that stuff and I think that's why a lot of people avoid it right because it's like talking about it with somebody else is the next part to confess it and to relieve myself of that burden of that pain and allow somebody else in which I was always like I don't trust anybody after seeing what happen my parents I just I didn't believe the institution of marriage was even real I just thought it was just people just pretending and I didn't really feel that love in my heart for anybody else it was always like if you make me feel good then I guess I love you yeah if you look good then I guess I should be your boyfriend or husband it's one of those things were just so superficial and so shallow and there was no real substance to it and then like I said I got further along until the point where I was actually going to see the parole board and then I had to face the victim's family okay I was gon ask about that this was a huge thing because it's been 15 years I didn't know who was going to show up but I had gone to this ministry kyus Ministry thing that they had every Monday night it's a group of men that come in and they we play music we sing songs we split off into groups we talk about how's Christ working in your life has there been any time where you've struggled to show Christ's love to somebody things like that and one of the outside volunteers he said Your name's Mark right I said yeah he said is it Mark Hubble I was like yeah he was like oh and I was like what he said there's going to be a lot of people that are showing up to your parole hearing next month and I was just like my heart sunk because it's like I have made all these positive changes in my life I'm following God now and now it's like all of the these emotions and these fears and anxiety just starts to creep in and when the parole hearing began there was at least 40 or 50 people that came in for the victim's family side and I had about 10 people my family and a couple people were on my side so it was like so lopsided there's three people on the parole board sitting in front of me I can't look behind me I'm facing the parole board everybody's behind me the co said do not look behind you do not look at the victim's family do not look at your family they said you just look at the parole board and we say that it's time for you to get up and go said okay so the parole board said is there anybody from victim side that would like to speak and I heard these feet Shuffle in to this Podium where there was a microphone and lo and behold it was the victim's mother the same one who was screaming in the courtroom and working the steps we talk about making amends I could not reach out to this person and write a letter it was against the rules it was against the law for me to contact victim's family in any way so in my mind I was like I would if I could but I can't and making those amends it just seemed like it all came to a head in this moment because when she got her chance to speak she said Mark I just want you to know something and here I was bracing for the worst oh my God she's going to say bury him under the prison don't never love him out he said Mark I just want you to know that I forgive you and I'm telling you the floodgates of tears just opened up I started balling I was just shaking I was baing so hard and crying so hard because of that relief of that all that built up thinking she's gonna say something and then it's like this God Shining Moment where forgiveness is shown and when I didn't even remember anything after that really the parole board said and there's other people that spoke and the parole board said is there anything you like to say and they have an opportunity to like give me more time let me go and I said you can give me 10 more years as long as I have her forgiveness I will do it gladly I said I know that I deserve to be punished for what I've done and I'm willing to accept that punishment whatever it is but I am not that man anymore but I know that I still envelop this body and this body has to be somewhere and if you think that it needs to be here that's fine if not that's fine I was like but having her for forgiveness is all that I need for the rest of my life I said I feel like I'm free right now yeah had that haunted you up to that point what I wrote a letter to her I wrote a letter because that was something that I was advised to do it's like well if you can't make amends and you can't reach out at least write the letter write what you would say if you had the opportunity to speak to this woman and I did and I wrote that letter and then after the hearing they decided that they weren't going to let me go they said you lied you pled not guilty you cost the state in the taxpayers a lot of money letting you out first time up we're not going to do that take another year to think about this and really feel this experience and I said thank you very much I will and then the next year the victim's mother was sitting with my family wow unbelievable and asking for them to release me she said this young man has changed and he needs to be out here sharing his faith with other people so had a relationship built between your family and the victim's mother outside of prison to cause that yeah and that's another crazy story my mom after the parole hearing my mom's crying she there's like this Locker area where people put their personal belongings before they go into the prison and my mom's crying and she's taking her stuff out of her locker and she looks over and she sees the victim's mother taking her stuff out of her locker and my mom saids she just dropped her head because shame and just not knowing really how to respond and she said that woman walked over to her and just put her things down and just gave my mom a big bear hug and they just stood there and cried my mom said for the next five minutes and she said and we'll do anything for our babies and then her and my mom got to be good friends she's a Believer right the victim she chti CH very strong believer also her brother who was the victim's unle I did not know this until I went down to visit the Calvary Chapel Newport News church he had invited me to visit there and I did not know this until I went to visit but he had wrote a letter on my behalf between 2015 and 2016 that next parole hearing saying that he said he believes that I have changed and that it's opened his heart up to see the change that has occurred in me and he believes that I should be released so all those things factored into me actually being paroled in 2016 and so when you talk about rebuilding life after addiction mine started while I was in a prison setting and I know guys they go to jail they go to prison they say when I get out I'll do this when I get out but in here I got to be this way and I'm like no you don't you can start developing good habits right here right now no matter what your circumstances are you can start right here and right now and that's what I did I was trying to live a free person's life while I was inside I was saying no to anything that was against the rules I don't care if the rule was stupid or not I don't care if it's a petty thing I was like I'm going to follow the rules because that's what I need to do yeah and it was my it was my idea and the recovery part says this is my idea to remain sober for the rest of my life and Justin on Friday last Friday I picked up my 20 threeyear chip in the program Alcoholics Anonymous the day I got arrested in September 29th of the year 2000 through September 20123 23 years have passed since I have man abused drugs or alcohol in any way shape or that's awesome man praise God that's awesome man congrats dude that is no easy feat and so did you get out the next year you said they really 2016 in October I had to wait 30 days it's crazy they Grant you parole then you have to another 30 days in prison while they get all the paperwork in order and they notify the state of Virginia because I was paring back to my home state and yeah it's like I got 30 days I'm I'm in there like every day was just like the longest day ever because I know that there's gonna be that day that I'm gonna walk out of there and when I did wait for somebody to do something stupid and I can't imagine that feeling man Justin I showed respect at all times while I was in there and every aspect of my life from my runand wild days to my new Faith Christian days so I was not concerned about anybody trying to do anything crazy to cause me to lose my parole what it was yeah that's awesome it was like guys were really rooting for me and when I got out those first 30 days I got everything in line and I said I know what my calling is to spread the message of faith and recovery and so many opportunities have open for me to do that because it's such a broad calling I'm not confined to one particular way to spread the message of faith and recovery and I can tell you about some of the things that I'm doing currently with my life yeah what steps have you taken what does that look like in pursuing that calling right what is Mark doing now to continue to fulfill that calling that was spoken on you way back right 2005 2006 2009 is when I got saved okay so 200 God gives you this call to Ministry and so now fast forward 2023 how is that materialized I'll break down the next month for you of my life and if you want to know more detail about how those things came to be then I'll be more than happy to tell you but there is one story that I do have to tell takes a few minutes about one area of my life okay so I was going to be a teacher and Coach sports that was my original dream so I know that coaching Sports is off the table because who's going to allow me to coach kids with a felony murder record all right so this last night I was facilitating a recovery based workshop at the loud and serenity house in leeburg Virginia it's a 10-part workshop series that I facilitate I came up with the material of course I use references for the material but I came up with the material in the format and I've been doing that since August of this year nice and I go in from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. on Thursday nights on a schedule I do 10 workshops this is the next series of five and last night's Workshop was called No safe bets the hidden dangers of gambling and I know that a lot of people after they get clean and sober they want that thrill that excitement and gambling is one of those easily accessible things that people do now I see guys on their phone all the time with a fanuel like oh I'm take so and so tonight in the game and I'm like I was like I wish you knew what the odds really were and that Workshop I tell people what the odds really are and how it's so stacked against them that it's better to just save your money and spend it wisely and save it than to try to gamble on Sports casino games lotteries so that was last night this weekend Sunday morning I'll be preaching at the Connecting Point Community Church in Clarksburg West Virginia the woman who is one of the leaders in that church pretty much the face of the church Peggy Williams her son actually was in jail with me in the year 2000 and 2001 and we got to know each other and she used to send me because he said Mom this is a really nice guy send him a letter every now and then he doesn't get too much mail so she sent me these things and all these Christian scriptures and passages and I wasn't a Christian at the time but it was just a nice gesture and I was respectful and I was like thank you very much for doing that and when I got out that was the first place that I was able to preach is wow connected Point her and brother Willie Owens they're they're the leaders of that church and it was just like a surreal experience because it's like wow we connected so long ago and now here we are connecting again under different circumstances what did that feel like stepping into the pulpit for the first time like I was completely and totally ready and I know what people think it's like I was nerv I was scared I was ready because you got to know that I've been preparing for that moment for the past seven or eight years to be in that position and to fulfill that area of my calling so I'll be there this Sunday 10:00 am to noon the following day I'm I'm driving from Clarksburg to Huntington West Virginia which has a huge recovery Community faith-based recovery Community down there life House program newness of Life program and there's also this place I'm going to on Monday morning called the Chilean Circle of Care and it's a men's Treatment Center which was started by a guy that I was in prison with William Berkeley he's the director there so he got with somebody they opened up this place and they're helping men a lot of people have alcohol drug abuse history and some have a jail Prison history so I'm going there on Monday morning and I'm going to do like a guest instructor for a recovery related class based on addiction and my story is always going to have a spiritual side to it that's right absolutely another way I'm spreading fulfilling that calling then later on that day at five o'clock I'm going to the newness of Life house and I'm going to be like a guest speaker and talk to them and then at 7 pm that night I'm going to the Norway Avenue Church of Christ which is the host church for the movement Church the movement live stream and it was started by a man named Rocky Meadows who I also had mentored when I was inside and he opened up one house and now he's got like 30 houses and huge Recovery Center triy State Recovery or something like that and I'm G to be preaching a message Monday night 7 o'clock on the movement live stream anybody can get on and watch that so that's the next four days and then I will be starting up as a middle school basketball coach for the fifth season for the Northern Virginia homeschooled Athletic Association this will be my fifth season as a Middle School boys basketball head coach these are kids ages 12 to 14 who are Christian homeschooled kids wow man and this is the quick story I want to share about that yeah that's powerful a kid in my there's a kid in my church and he gave me an invitation to attend his graduation party me and my wife then he sent me a message hey graduation party is this weekend I hope to see you there and he's big kid too so I was like we must played football or something so I go to his house my wife has to talk me in to go into his house because I'm like man I was like I really just don't fit in with a bunch of church people and Christian people and I hate to say that but I just there the anxiety creeps up and the feelings creep up and it's like if I had a choice I would choose to just not go but my wife love her so much she said no we got to go and she's like it's it's it's Seth we got to go and so I said' okay so I go in there and there's these real tall guys and they got on these blue shirts that say centurions on them and I knew that Seth had played football and he played basketball too but I thought it was for an actual real high school I didn't know that he was homeschooled and so I started talking to the coaches and the basketball coach said yeah we're having a basketball camp next week and our speaker was coming from New York and he's not able to make it and we heard that you do guest speaking and I said yeah I do gu speaking and I said I play basketball so I can relate my basketball experience to my faith and speak to the kids at this Camp it's like okay well it's on Saturday and I said well I have a request and they said yeah they said I said would it be possible if I could be a coach instructor at the camp a shooting instructor ball handling instructor and they were like yeah we definitely need all the help we can get so I showed up and I was doing the ball handling and shooting instructing all throughout the week and then I delivered a message about being a great teammate I didn't tell anything about my past and what I had gone through as far as my prison or strictly focused on being a great teammate how to be a great teammate and how God can allow us to be great teammates on the court off the court and great people so after that the other coaches they got together and they said would you be interested coaching our basketball team this year and I said yeah but I got to tell you something and so I told them about my past and they said well we still want you to apply to an interview for the position and I'm like well I don't want to waste anybody's time if it's going to be a hard no based on my past and they were like no they said we're a private Christian organization and we decide who is allowed to be in this organization or not and I said well if we do this then I'll I'll do the interview I did the interview they wanted to have me on they said which level do you want to coach I said I want to start at the lowest level I want to start Middle School I want to build a great foundation for them so the transition to your levels will be easier you don't have to teach them how to play basketball anymore I've already taken care of that so they said we're going to hire you as our basketball coach and I said well we need to talk to the parents first I said I want you to get all the parents in the room and I said I'm going to share my story and I did and I sh shared my story with the parents and I said if any one of you wants to withdraw your sons from this program based on my past don't I will leave I'll leave right now I said don't deny your kid that opportunity because of me and I said does anybody have any questions for me comments concerns well one guy raised his hand and he said Mark the fact that you're willing to give up something you love so much and are so passionate about so one of these not one of these kids misses out makes me want you to coach my son even more that's integrity that's what real leadership is about that's what real love is about and he said if we're we're we're Christians and we can't forgive then are we really Christians and so the other parents just said we want you here and we're willing to see what happened in your past is in your past and you were no longer that person you had your Paul experience you had your Damascus Road experience from that point on you've been doing great things in your life and this is something Justin that I stopped praying about being a basketball coach because I thought it was such an unbelievable impossible thing to happen that I didn't even pray for it anymore and yet look how God blessed me but I took a team they were they had not won a game the previous year they were 0 and 12 the previous year they had not won a game and so I took over and I was like well it can only go up from here I can't do any worse yeah the last year's coach not to knock him I'm just saying I can't do any worse and we ended up having a winning record wow and the coaches were just like floor they were like I cannot believe that you guys have a winning record and we played some amazing games but it was so you're saying there's Hope from the commanders too I don't know about the commanders I don't speak on professional sports but I know that having this opportunity that's another way that I can reach out and fulfill my calling of spreading the message of faith and Recovery is talking to those kids and talking to those kids that were the same age I was when I was so impressionable and needed those strong role models in my life and I get to be that strong role model and at some point during the season I do open up and talk about consequences making good choices and so that's going to be next month is the practices start and then The Season's about to begin and I am the assistant pastor now at the Hay Market Church of Christ the church I'm a member of the men got together and they said that it was there was a need that needed to be filled and that they wanted me to fulfill that need of an assistant so I step in for our pastor whenever he's not there and it's just like one thing after another and then last but not least I just want to have to say this getting married to my amazing wife and we were trying to have kids we're both in our 40s and they said you got about a 5% chance of ever conceiving and through the fertility treatment and prayers many prayers we now have a two-year-old son named Remington yeah and he's just the greatest thing in the world yeah that's awesome man what an incredible impactful story just all the way through everything that you've walked through man and then seeing you in this season of your life be faithful to the call and then God just me like after that decision to just be obedient just pursue the call like all the other dreams right being fulfilled along the way and oh man it's just it's it's incredible so faith in recovery right and you mentioned a lot of the stuff that you're doing now and oh man how could how do folks connect to Mark if they want to get a hold of you what's the best way for the to find you on the internet or if they want to get you said you do workshops you do speaking all this different stuff so how can folks reach out to you no there's numerous ways I have a Instagram account Dr. Hubble HBL e1016 so Dr Hubble 1016 on Instagram Mark B Hubble on Facebook I think I'm the only Mark B Hubble I put the middle initial in there to because there's other Mark hubbles the mark be Hubble look that up you can find me on Facebook send me a message and just say hey I saw I'm trying to connect with you connect that way I do a Monday morning mini message on Facebook and I post some of them to YouTube as like a backup in case my Facebook gets hacked so Dr Mark be Hubble on YouTube you can look it up there and MB Hubble 16 Gmail no dots no dashes just MB hubl E1 16@gmail.com contact me any of those ways fantastic now back in the interview Mark you talked about I did the inner work while I was in jail you said I wanted to live the life of a free person while I was in that prison and you let God begin to do the work of transforming your heart your mind doing all that inner work and so man just thinking of the attic at this moment right the individual that may come across and is in that place where and they want sobriety but they're they're still fighting with doing that in a work they're still living in a prison even though they're not maybe not be behind bars but they're they're free but not really what is I if you I know there's a lot right if there's one thing that you learned about doing that inner work and that journey to get started what would that be to not fear what you're going to find out I think a lot of people in addiction are living in fear and they're they're trying so hard not to relive and revisit those painful parts of their past that avoidance is not taking care of the problem avoidance is ignoring the problem even though the problem exists and then pretending like if I just put this in my system I'm not going to forget about that I'm gonna just forget about everything and forget about those problems I can stand on the beach and I can turn my back to the ocean and I can pretend like the Tide's not going to come in all day long but eventually my feet are going to start to get wet and eventually I'm going to be enveloped and eventually I'm going to drown and I don't want to see people drown anymore I don't want to see people drown because they're avoiding what source that the pain is coming from they're avoiding that source and I would always say just to not Fe fear what you're going to find out and that have tose before you get better you're going to have to go through some pain in order to relive it and to process it then to accept it and to move on from that point all right I know everybody's got a pass but I always say that the true source of addiction comes from something that's happened to us in the past or something that we've done in the past that we're we're trying to mask or trying to cover up