Restored to Lead: Meet Myron
Restored to Lead: Meet Myron
Imagine standing a month from your high school graduation, scholarship already in your hand, and yet still searching for who you are. That was Myron at age seventeen. That search for identity would lead him down a road none of us would choose, one that cost him years of his life behind bars. What he found in prison changed his entire life. This is the story of how God restored what Myron thought was lost for good, and how Myron now spends his days walking that same restoration out with other men.
Growing Up
Myron grew up in Bennettsville, South Carolina, in a home full of love, especially with his younger brother. The two of them spent countless hours side by side playing video games, growing up together under the same roof as their mom and dad. His bond with his older brother looked a little different. They had different dads, and his brother was years further along. He had already graduated and served in the Marine Corps before Myron really had the chance to get to know him. While his older brother served overseas, Myron sat behind bars. The miles and the years between them grew into something Myron simply calls awkward, a relationship neither one of them quite knew how to hold onto. Today, that relationship is whole again. Myron gives God the credit for rebuilding what time and distance once pulled apart.
Growing up, church was part of life for Myron's family, though he would be the first to say it felt more like a habit than a desire out of the heart. It was his grandmother who carried real faith into the household. Although she did not live under the same roof, she made sure Myron knew who God was long before he ever understood what that would mean for his own life. She passed away in 1989.
Looking back now, Myron believes it was her quiet influence, planted all those years earlier, that shaped the man he would eventually become. "I can honestly say that because of my grandma, that probably helped me to be in the position I'm in today, as far as my relationship with the Lord," he says. But there is a difference between knowing about God and truly knowing Him. For Myron, that personal encounter was still years away, waiting in a place he never expected to find it.
Searching for Identity
At age seventeen and just a month away from walking across the graduation stage, Myron made a choice that would cost him years of his life. A scholarship to Voorhees College sat waiting for him. So did the Marine Corps, and a future in trucking. But underneath every open door, something deeper was still missing.
"I was searching for an identity," Myron says.
He looked for it in the women he dated and the cars he drove, anywhere he thought it might be hiding. On the inside, he did not know who he was or what it meant to be a man, as no one had ever modeled that to him well. That search for identity is what ultimately led him to prison.
Submitting to the Lord
Myron first crossed paths with JUMPSTART SC in 2014, and if he is honest, he resisted it at first. He already had a college degree, one he had earned while incarcerated, and part of him believed the program was beneath him. But he could not ignore what he saw happening in the other men in the room. Something real was taking root in them, and it stirred a question in Myron that would not let him go:
What was he actually doing to advance the kingdom?
That question changed everything. Myron stepped up as a table leader and kept growing in his faith. Then in 2017, he transferred to Tyger River and drifted off course for a season. His walk with the Lord grew quiet."I got sick and tired of being sick and tired," Myron remembers.
From that moment forward, he made the decision to live fully for the Lord, and to pour everything within his reach not just into his own growth, but into helping other men grow too. Myron says drugs were around at Tyger River, so he became a certified peer support specialist and helped in the sober living unit, all while working alongside JUMPSTART SC's inside program to disciple other men. He points to a fellow believer named Jimmy McPhee, a man who had spent years on death row, as one of the biggest reasons he stayed the course and is free today. "If he can do it, I can do it," Myron thought. So, he surrendered fully, not just to a program, but his whole life.
"I found that it wasn't a bad thing to submit," he says.
What once felt like fear slowly became freedom. He stopped chasing what made him look cool and started having honest, wide open conversations with God, the same kind he now shares with you. His favorite verse is Romans 1:16. He is not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because he has felt its power firsthand.
"That is what He does," Myron says of God. "He restores people, no matter what your background is, or where you come from, or what you have done. Just put your faith in Him and trust Him. If He can do it for me, imagine what He can do for you."
The Day Everything Changed
The final two months before Myron's parole hearing were, in his own words, the hardest of his entire life. A pro bono attorney named Mrs. Powell stood beside him every step of the way, helping him prepare for what was coming. When Myron was finally allowed to read his own file, the weight of his past hit him harder than he expected. He remembers thinking, "I do not deserve to walk free."
Through it all, he had kept a journal, page after page recording the ways God had shown up for him. That journal carried him through the waiting.
"God did not bring me this far to take something away," he told himself.
Myron had made peace with the idea of staying in prison, knowing he was serving the Lord right where he stood, but hope for parole never left him. On the day of his hearing, Myron stood before the board and gave a short, honest speech, taking full responsibility for his past.Then he was asked to step outside and wait. When the officer called him back into the office instead of simply telling him the verdict, Myron's heart braced for the worst.
Instead, he heard the words he had been praying for. "He said, by the way, you made parole," Myron remembers.
"It was like somebody stuck their foot out and tripped me. I fell flat on my face praising the Lord."
To this day, he calls it the greatest moment of his life. When he walked out of prison, his mother and younger brother were there waiting for him. They shared a meal together and then drove straight to Restoration Village.
Leading From What He Learned
Today, Myron serves on JUMPSTART SC's staff in transportation support and as a house manager. He walks alongside the men in his house, helping them settle into village life and grow into good stewards of the second chance in front of them. He drives his peers to work, to appointments, to church, and everywhere in between. Along the way, as a certified peer support specialist, he offers the same encouragement and lived experience that once carried him through his darkest days.
Myron says he stays humble by looking at his own heart first, before he ever looks at someone else's struggle. He often thinks back to a piece of wisdom from Anthony Mullinax that has never left him: instead of talking about the things of this world, talk about Jesus with the guys. That is exactly what Myron does, every single day, one ride and one conversation at a time.
You Can Be A Part of This Story
Myron's story did not end at a parole hearing. It continues today, in every man he drives to work, in every conversation he has in the car, in every life he helps steward toward restoration. Restoration Village exists because people like you believed second chances were worth investing in. Your support built the houses where men like Myron come home to. Your support keeps the doors open for the next Myron, still searching for his identity, still waiting for someone to show him the way.
Will you be the reason someone like Myron finds hope today?
Watch the Full Interview here:
Myron’s story is what JUMPSTART SC exists to make possible. Since 2008, this faith-based prison ministry has walked alongside incarcerated men and women across South Carolina, offering Christ-centered discipleship on the inside and real support after release: housing, employment, mentoring, and a community that doesn't give up on them.
Stories like Myron’s are funded by people who believe in second chances. Your gift helps put someone in the Word behind bars, gives them a place to land when they walk out, and helps rebuild the families that addiction and incarceration tore apart. Every dollar goes toward changing a life, and through it, a family and a community.
