Westside Stories: Myles Southern

A year after marrying his wife Caroline, Myles Southern, captain in the Army Reserves and member here at Westside, got the call: deploy to Europe. The fear wasn't danger. Europe was a friendly deployment. The fear was quieter than that: What does day-to-day look like? What does this do to my marriage, my friendships, my faith?

Myles didn't come to faith easily or early. He grew up in the church but says it was college, at UGA, surrounded by guys who took Jesus seriously in a fraternity that somehow became a place of real discipleship, where his faith moved from something he'd inherited to something he actually chose. That community shaped how he understood church for years afterward. He just didn't know yet how much he'd need it.

Nine months into deployment, he found out. Myles was the only officer from his unit to deploy, cut off from the community he'd spent years building back home, and boundaries with the soldiers under his command meant he couldn't lean on them either. "We are not designed to be alone," he says. He tried to outrun the loneliness the way most of us do, the gym, TV, anything to stop thinking about it. It didn't work. The feeling was always waiting for him the moment he looked up from the screen.

What changed things was reaching out, first to a friend back home, then to the Psalms themselves. Myles admits he was struggling to pray at the exact moment he needed prayer most. "I had direct access to the throne," he says, "but it was really difficult." The Psalms gave him words when he had none of his own, honest enough to just ask, God, where are you?

What happened next, how a community he'd built without ever meaning to refused to let him and Caroline walk that season alone, is the part worth hearing in his own words. It's a story about what loneliness actually costs, and what it takes to fight your way back to belonging.

Hear the whole story on the Westside Stories podcast, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or at AtlantaWestside.org/podcasts.