Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olson. Welcome. You can find Bleeding Daylight on Facebook and Instagram. Links and other episodes are at bleedingdaylight.net. Please share Bleeding Daylight with others. Today's guest had to navigate a fractured family and shattered dreams to find his place in this world. Today, he provides others with the stability he once yearned to experience.
My guest today co-authored the book Wrestling with Demons. It's a book that gives hope to anyone wondering if a difficult life can truly be turned around. Mark Smith had a troubled upbringing and was then robbed of the one thing that he thought would be his road to a better life. I'm so pleased that he is joining me on Bleeding Daylight to share some of his story. Mark, thank you for your time today. Brother, I thank you so much and it's really a pleasure. I want to go back to those early years.
What are your memories of home life as a boy? I would say stability was something missing because my mom is a great lady. My dad was beaten with chains when he was a kid. There were things about my dad that he never processed about his own life. And understanding that, there was a rockiness. My dad was very unstable. His temper could just fly off the top for little or no reason. And there was some violence involved.
I believe as a child, one of the greatest things they need growing up is stability in the household. When you don't have that, there's a feeling of being lost, maybe. Just feeling like you're that feather floating in the wind and you really don't know what's coming next. So there was a lot of uncertainty. There was some fear. How long did it take for you to realize that this was not normal? Because we all grow up in whatever circumstance we grow up in and we always assume that is normal.
So it must have seemed normal for you to live in that fear, to live in that instability. When was it you started to realize, hey, the others at school, the other people around me are not living a life like this? I believe that when a person can be one way at home and another way outside the home, there is really not a certain point where you go, aha, things are different in other places. There's an assuming that takes place that everybody else is doing the same thing.
It was not until probably my second stepdad that I learned more about what a father-son relationship ought to be. And he was a great man. A lot of times you don't know unless you're in someone's home and you're really able to see over a period of time what goes on behind the closed doors. When you see other people acting all nice and they're outside their home, you just wonder, okay, who's real and who's not? And you really don't know who is real.
In those early days, were there others in the family? What constituted family for you in those days? Yes, there were brothers and sisters. My siblings, the closest one to me is around six or seven years older than I am. What I understood was that as soon as you can, you get married and you get out. My brothers and sisters had each other because they were much closer in age. I was the baby and much younger.
When they left, they reached out some to try to give me some normality and I certainly appreciate that. But when all's said and done and you're going to bed at night, you do realize you're the only kid left in the house. Depending on how my father was, that could be terrifying. As you're growing up, you're trying to find your own way in the world. But at the same time, there's this abusive situation. There's this instability. What did you see as your escape out of this?
As you say, your siblings were older and would get married and get out of the home as soon as possible. What did you see as your escape? Alcohol and sports. I know that the alcohol, I look back at it now and I understand it was a form of escapism. Sports was the manner in which what I was trying to do was, number one, figure out who I am. And number two, really trying to feel like I am somebody.
Because I was a fairly decent, pretty good athlete, I felt like that was going to be the road that I was going to take. Sports was about my identity. How early did you start drinking? You mentioned that alcohol was one of those escapes. It would have been my early years in high school. I do remember one time I was in a typing class and when you're drinking, you think you can handle any situation. And we were taking a typing test.
I passed out in the middle of the test and my forehead went down and hit the keyboard. The teacher walked over to me and she picked up the paper. She gently grabbed my hair and just kind of pulled my head up. She said, Mark, what is this? And it spelled something like glubish glubin. It was just a mixture of letters. I said, ma'am, I'm studying a foreign language. She said, honey, just go back to sleep. Tell me about that journey into sports. What did that mean for you?
When you're so desperate trying to understand how you fit in the world, you don't want to be the way things were when you grew up. You want them to be different. And you see the athletes and being in Atlanta, Georgia, the Atlanta Braves, there was Dale Murphy, who was a very fabulous family man. I don't think I was fooling myself, but I was looking for that identity and to be able to say, hey, I've made something. I grabbed pieces of plywood. I began putting them in my backyard against a tree.
I took paint, painted me a strike zone, and I was throwing. And my mom signed me up for some baseball, so I knew baseball. As I'm getting into my mid-teen years, I'm throwing, and with one throw, I'm throwing a baseball through a piece of wood. And I'm thinking, wow, I must be able to do something here. My first stepdad played some semi-pro ball, and we were watching the baseball game one night, and they were having a tryout in Durham, North Carolina.
With encouragement, I went and did fairly well, and then I started getting calls about going to spring training. At that point, I thought I was going to have it made. I really did. I realize now, you never know what tomorrow brings. You're looking forward to that great opportunity that sits in front of you, and I'm wondering whether at the same time as you're seeing that as an escape, you're probably also trying to get approval from family that you'd never received.
And so you're all set for this great opportunity, and what happened to get in the way? Two things. The same stepdad that encouraged me to go, he was a very good man, but he had a problem with prescription drugs. He got into a tiff with me one night physically by pitching hand, went into the floor. And then about two weeks later, I was working for a jewelry store, and I happened to be driving.
A young boy was drinking a Coca-Cola from McDonald's, ran a stop sign, and hit me, and my pitching hand went through the dash, the instrument panel. When I went to the doctor, he said the nerve damage was irreparable. I felt one of the most hopeless feelings I've ever had. I've had a few worse, but that was one of the worst. Where did things lead from there? Your dream has gone, and yet there's still hope to actually get out of this situation. Where did you turn next?
Alcohol. At that point, I felt like I couldn't escape. The booze was basically a way of just trying to find contentment. And at that point, I was existing as a person. I wasn't living. All I knew was the sun was going to come up, the sun was going to go down, and nothing was going to be any different about me. I got married. I just wasn't a nice guy. I was hurting terribly. I was not physically abusive or anything like that as a husband, but did I play mind games? Yes, I did.
From there, one of the head bookers in New York for Vince McMahon at the time, his son came to me. We went through grade school and high school together. He said, Mark, come with me after work tonight. I'll come by, pick you up, and I'll drop you back off at your car. And I said, sure. So we went to a wrestling ring. It was in the woods. I'd never seen a wrestling ring in the woods before. I looked at him like he was crazy. And he told me all the people he had been working with.
He said, you really need to do this. I began training on a one-inch Olympic wrestling mat. And if you've ever felt those, those are very hard. And it was on a cement floor. And that's how I trained for over four months. And what sort of success did you have in that area of wrestling? I was shocked. I was one of those people that were very fortunate that got to meet the right people, I guess, at the right time. In the state of Georgia, there's a town called Cleveland.
It's a small country town, and they have wrestling. They're local wrestling shows. They used to about twice a month. A very famous person in the wrestling industry called me one day. He said, Mark Smith. I said, yes, sir. He said, I'm Jody Hamilton. I said, pleased to meet you, Mr. Hamilton. I know who you are, sir. He said, Mark, can you be in Cleveland tonight for me? I said, sure, Mr. Jody. I can be up there with no problem. It's a two-hour drive. Do you want me up there by six o'clock?
He said, Mark, you don't understand what I'm asking you. He said, I have become the head booker for World Championship Wrestling. It's been bought by Ted Turner. I need you to come to CNN Center, to the 12th floor, to their WCW offices, and pick up a plane ticket. You're going to be in Cleveland, Ohio, tonight, which is a major city in America. I need you to get up here now. You've got to catch a plane.
I said, yes, sir, Mr. Jody. I've told people before that CNN Center was about a 45-minute drive from my house. I packed my gear and left so fast. I think when I got to CNN Center, my rear end was still about 15 minutes behind me. You know, I was very excited, scared to death. All these people I'd seen growing up, they're there. And I thought, I'm not worthy. And I began working. And the more I began working, the more they began to respect me.
I was flying across the country, still married, a very bad marriage. I became such a terrible person, being on the road all the time and everything. I was a terrible person. For about the next three or four years, that's what I was doing, flying on planes, wrestling in big arenas all across America. You must have thought, I've finally found my way out of that small life that I grew up in. And yet, at the same time, you're in this marriage, and that's not going well.
And the wrestling doesn't last. Tell me, what happened to put an end to that lifestyle? When I was home, I wasn't home. My mind was elsewhere, because the pain level in pro wrestling is very real. On the table next to my recliner, I would have marijuana. I would have a cooler with beer. And then I would also have very strong narcotics. That is how I would deal with being at home. I neglected her.
In fact, in the book I wrote, Wrestling with Demons, I had someone ask me, they said, Mark, who was the villain in this book? And I looked at them, I said, I am. And you should have saw the look on their face. For me, writing the book, it was cleansing. I cried the entire time I wrote it, because I remembered the responsibility that I have, because of so many things that I did. I finally had walked in after a trip, and my wife was laying face down on the bed.
I turned her over to see what was wrong. It was a very strange laughing, kind of a cackling noise. I didn't know what it was. When she was turned around, something pushed me off the bed onto the floor. Now imagine, you're a big wrestler, I weigh about 300 pounds, got my knee on a bed. I turn her over, and something is like, it pushes me in the shoulders, and it pushes me off the bed onto the floor. I thought, wow, that's not natural. And I was scared.
So I ran, got in the car, drove around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes, came back in, and she was totally composed, which I thought was strange. But she said, I'm leaving. And I couldn't blame her. I really could not blame her. I was horrible. And all I could do was say, I'm sorry, and I knew that wasn't enough. She left the apartment, and I was cleaning, and we were living around the Atlanta, Georgia area. And I found a pregnancy test, or I wasn't sure what it was, in the trash can.
I took it to one of my sisters. She said it's a positive pregnancy test. I don't know what happened. I kept calling, trying to figure out what happened. Ended up, someone picked up the phone and said, everything's taken care of. I do not know what that means. I would never say she did this or she did that, because I would not want people to look at her in a bad way, because I don't know what happened. In my heart of hearts, I felt like I was the reason that baby did not come into this world.
If you want to have a come to Jesus, realize that not only have you ruined lives, but you've probably caused one to never be born. You've alienated yourself from everyone. The one person you're married to, they couldn't take it anymore, and you can't blame anybody for anything. All you can do, really, is blame yourself. And I found myself in that hole, and I was wrestling with demons. I had become a wrestler. I was the Wrestler Mark Smith.
And brother, what I forgot was I never was the Wrestler Mark Smith. I was Mark Smith, a guy who wrestled. I lost my identity. I was, frankly, too full of myself. You know, the Bible talks about pride, and brother, I'll tell you what, the Bible's right. You come into situations with pride, and you carry yourself with pride, you'll get knocked down pretty fast. In that hole is where some decisions had to be made. But that's how my marriage and wrestling ended.
When I destroyed all those lives, somebody talked to me, and they said, Mark, you're in trouble for steroids. I said, what? They said, yeah, you're going to get 20 years. I said, well, look, I'm not going back into the business. I've caused enough damage. Tell me what I'm supposed to do. And a local sheriff stood up for me, and he said, this isn't a bad boy. If we lock him up, we'll turn him into a bad boy. And I was allowed to walk out.
I was still in the hole, but this sheriff gave me my life back. You've come, really, to the end of yourself. Life hasn't been good. You thought that there was an escape, and yet that escape seemed to take you down more dark roads. You've come to this place where you need to find a turning point. Where did you find that? I walked into a house of some people I knew. They knew I was a mess. They said, Mark, why don't you just take that second bedroom right there and just stay here tonight?
I was an emotional wreck. I walked into the room. I sat on the bed. It was almost like somebody snapping their fingers to get your attention. I looked up, and there's this chest of drawers, and on top of it is a book. I don't know what it is. Well, I reach up there, and I get it, and I pull it down. I'm sitting down, and I open it, and I open it to Proverbs 1. It's a Bible of all things. I jokingly laugh. I go, well, it can't do no worse than what I've already done. So, I'll read a few lines.
But the thing is, is when I read it, I couldn't put it down. And it was so clear. Instead of saying, if someone does so-and-so, it might as well have said, if Mark does this, then this is going to happen to Mark. Everything it talked about, if I had done it, I did get the consequences. Just like that book said. I'm thinking, this is voodoo or something. What in the world is going on? But I read it. I read all of Proverbs, just sitting there on that bed.
And it was like this inner voice is saying, I'm showing you something. I'm showing you something. And so, on a Sunday morning, I'm out, and I'm driving around. I didn't really know it, but maybe in my subconscious, I did. I don't know, but I was not going to go to a church. But I rode right past a church. Huh, I'll go in there. I went in there, sat on the back row. It was about 12 minutes or so before the service started.
I got so nauseated, got so sick, I went up, and I vomited on the front lawn. I go back in, sit down, and I'm thinking, that's not going to happen again now. Maybe three minutes later, I get so sick, I don't even think I'm going to make it outside. I run outside, vomit again on the front lawn. This really sounds like a great message of salvation, doesn't it, brother? I mean, this is really the way it happened, though. I say, okay, I'm going to go in there one more time. I went in there.
I was squeezing the end of the pew so hard that my knuckles were white. I was squeezing it with my left hand. With my right hand, I was grabbing the cushion, and I squeezed it as hard as I could. I know it was not the proper thing to say, but I said, hell or high water, I'm not leaving this now. Well, these people came out, started singing a song, and before they got done with that song, people say, I literally ran to the altar. It felt just like someone put a garden hose into my navel.
I remember I was praying, and it was just like all these things were coming up from my belly and coming out of me. Somebody taps me like that, but it's on my back, on my shoulder. I look back, and it was the daddy of my next-door neighbor that I grew up with. I go, Mr. Lewis, what you doing here? He said, Mark, I'm the pastor of this church. I know why you're here, though. Pastor Lewis, how did I get here? Son, you ran. You ran down here faster than you ever ran those ring ropes. Really?
Mr. Lewis, what time is it? And the service started at 10.50. He said, it's 1.30. Everybody's been gone for a while. Mark, let me take you to lunch. He doesn't ask me any questions. We just laugh and have a good time. He ended up marrying my wife, Brenda, and we've been married now for 31 years. I was born in the 60s, so I really remember the 70s. There was a lot of racial unrest. I was wondering, did I carry any of that with me? I'd hug everybody I know, white, black, Hispanic, whatever.
But I was wondering, how bad am I? When I married Brenda, she looked at me and she said, Mark, I think I'm going to marry a minister. I said, what I've been through and what I've done, you've got to be kidding. The next week, walking into a hardware store, this old fella taps me on the shoulder. Son, I don't know you and I'm sorry, but I've got a word for you. I thought, uh-huh, you tap me hard like that on the shoulder, I may have a couple words for you too.
Anyway, that makes me kind of edgy when I have people tapping me on the shoulder. He says, son, you don't have to go to school the rest of your life to be a minister. I don't know what kind of look I had on my face, brother, but I probably looked at him like, what in the world tarnation are you talking about? Do you know what I've done and who I am? I mean, I'm surprised he didn't get struck by lightning after saying that.
But over the next two to three weeks, the same thing happened six times by male and females, tapping me on the shoulder, same exact words. Son, I have a word for you. I had gotten to the point to where I was scared to walk out my front door. I really had. And to be telling me the same thing and finally I say, OK, God, what are you doing? Are you really telling me this? Come on. I don't want to go to school. I'm not going to school no more.
One day, I felt like I should go and apologize because I had gone to junior college one year and I had ended the year with a 1.11 GPA and I was kicked out of the school. They told me they had never seen nobody work so hard to be stupid. The same dean was there. I went and I tell her and my eyes start watering a little bit. She starts crying. I tell her everything. She said, Mark, you're supposed to go to school. I said, but she said, Mark, you know it. And that's when I accepted it.
I said, OK, yes, ma'am. I know I am supposed to go back to school. I hate school. She said, well, I think you're going to find this different because you're not the same person that you were. Well, I got my bachelor's in sociology, psychology and pastoral ministry with a 3.5 GPA. In grad school, I had a 3.75 GPA. What I expressed to my own children is the hardest obstacles are what seems to be the hardest obstacles.
If you have the foundation of God under you and directing you, you may think those new tasks are the hardest things in the world. But what you'll find is you'll actually find joy in doing it. I found joy in going to school and learning. And for this other stage of my life, brother, where I'm talking to you right now, I'm thankful. I became a minister. And then all of a sudden, these kids started coming through the door, kids I'd never seen. And I found out they were foster children.
My wife, Brenda, told me, she said, Mark, you said decades ago that we were going to be foster parents. And brother, I swear to you, I don't remember. I really don't. But we heard stories of them being with families and families putting padlocks on their refrigerator so the kids couldn't eat. And all these kind of horror stories. And Brenda looked at me and she said, Mark, it's time. It's time we foster. I said, yeah, yeah, it is. Well, we fostered for a long time.
And I told you how I grew up and I was wondering how much racism was really embedded in me because of what I heard growing up on TV and newspaper and all that. Today, I'm very proud to tell you that Brenda and I have eight children. We have an African-American, a Native American Indian. We have two Hispanics and four Caucasians. We are one big, I'd say we're a happy family. All ages of kids from late 20s to seven years old.
Every child we've adopted, when I hugged them, whether their hair is different or the texture of their skin is different. One thing that I realized, you can take the paint off a house, but if you take that paint off a house, you still have a house with any of us. If we take away the hair or change the color of the hair or change the color of the skin, the fact is we're still children. We're still children of God and we need to be loved. I'm proud of every kid that I have. God never makes junk.
None of you out there are junk. And none of you should feel like you're worthless. You all have the ability to be loved and you all have the ability to love. Maybe you've been abused and you're fighting with that saying, I can't get over this. What do I do? I can't get over it. I'm worthless. No, you're not. You don't have to fight all these battles in life alone. Mark, I know that people will want to get in touch with you. They will want to get a copy of that book, Wrestling with Demons.
So I will put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you easily and connect with you. But I just want to thank you for being so open and honest with your story and sharing that with us today on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and thank you, brother. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others.
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