About the Author
Cathy Boyd Byrd invites others to join her in considering topics of interest to those on the Christian spiritual journey…..discipleship, spirituality, mental health, Christian growth, and Bible study. Cathy enjoys working with others as they transition from emotional emergency and brokenness to spiritual emergence and abundant living! Many of the topics about which Cathy writes are interrelated as experienced in her own life and in the lives of those with whom she works in counseling, teaching, and case management, and in friendships. She believes that sharing our journey of Christian growth and spirituality helps us know God and ourselves better and connects us with others!
Cathy is a Christian Educator and Life Recovery Counselor, and an ordained deacon through Christian Leaders Institute. She serves as Community Outreach MInister at Lynn Haven United Methodist Church. She is a student (disciple) of the Holy Spirit and shares with her students (disciples) the things the Lord teaches her through Bible study and contemplation, incorporating experiences interpreted through the Word, cherished traditions of her faith, and reasoning that comes from seeking the mind of Christ in accountable community. She was widowed in August 2020 after 48 years of marriage to Bill Byrd, is mother of 2 and grandmother of 5. Her journey of faith has been lifelong and continues to be an adventure with the trailblazer and guide, Jesus Christ!
Cathy is the founder and program manager for a Christian women’s residential life recovery program, Titus 2 Partnership, Inc.(www.titus2.life) in Panama City, Florida.
Cooking for Bill: A Memory
From 2/4/2018 Sweet Memory of Life With Bill I am so blessed to have a husband who is so easy to please with food. He will pretty much eat whatever I cook. He recently purchased an extra large T-fal skillet...really nice....to try his hand at cooking. I had not used it more than a time or two. Tonight I cooked pan seared flounder filets. I put a salad and small red potatoes with it. He said given a choice of steak, pizza, or fish, he'd take fish every time! I had not realized he was so fond of fish! I said, "It must be the new skillet." He said, "I think it's the skillet operator." Ha ha!...
Passionate Christ-Follower Or Spiritual Crackpot
Colossians 2:18- "Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind." In a devotional message to other pastors a teacher was emphatic about not getting caught in the false Gnosticism of "super spiritual people and groups." Since I have shared some with this pastor , I wondered: Is that how I am viewed ? Overly religious and suspect. I have no special revelation that is not available to all who love Christ and His...
God’s Early Test Before The Call
There was a time I visited a large couples Sunday School class years ago at a church. Their prayer request time took up most of the session and the burdens were significant for some. It became so oppressive and overwhelming to me I had to leave the class. Later on a woman in the group became a friend. She opened up to me privately about some things in her life that were shocking and alarming. Over the next few years I walked with her through some very hard emotional grieving and relationship boundary work that reoriented her and strengthened her to set some necessary boundaries to stop the...
Missing Bill’s Support In Ministry….$
I have lived in exile from the world many years but it didn't seem so strange when Bill was here with me. I'm still adapting to this reality. But Christ is closer than ever all the same... the presence of the seedbed.com online community helps ...the people there I share in banded community with help. Isn't it amazing how this manner of reading and immersion in the Word can bring such peace while also separating one further and further from the world's opinions of what is important? Thank you, God, for your faithful servants who provide the encouragement and challenge many need. Bill made...
Hearts and Hands
It takes hands to build a house but only hearts can build a home. Anon.
God Places The Lonely In Families
Psalm 68 "May God arise, may his enemies be scattered; may his foes flee before him. 2 May you blow them away like smoke— as wax melts before the fire, may the wicked perish before God. 3 But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful. 4 Sing to God, sing in praise of his name, extol him who rides on the clouds; rejoice before him—his name is the Lord. 5 A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. 6 God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land. 7...
Gift of The Unseen
Jesus said He had to leave for the benefit of His followers, so the Comforter could come.... Jesus knew we would depend on seeing Him with our own eyes, on having His physical Presence, as long as we could. We could never mature in the Spirit while depending on our physical senses. His Immortality could not continue to manifest, feeding our physical senses in the physical realm, and sustain freewill for mankind's continued existence in the physical. Faith is the fulfilled desire to see beyond the physical that is rewarded with the gift of The Unseen that gives us spiritual vision to see more...
Idolatry and Nature
The Bible tells us that God’s glory is manifest all around us in creation from the beauty of the cosmos to craggy mountain landscapes. God has used many things to capture the eye and attention of mankind and to speak to their hearts and minds. Donkeys, burning bushes, wandering stars, pillars of smoke and fire, flocks of sheep, vineyards, fig trees, etc. In my life God has used a plowed field, a cardinal family, the symmetry of flowers, trees, sunsets, and other created things to attract my attention. If one has not known God’s Word and the history and traditions of God’s ways of engaging...
Catch 22: Being Second
A friend posted that none of us are going to avoid the end of the world…. That reality she related to life being like a Catch-22 paradox. Well, living for God is a paradox ….To live for SELF is to die; to die to SELF is to live for God in Christ. When we do that we, like Jesus, subordinate ourselves to the will of God, who is always First…..#1…. …Jesus submitted his own will to be #2 to his Father’s will. When we want to live for SELF we are usurping God’s position as #1. When we choose to live in submission to God’s will…… we become like Jesus……co-heirs with him of the position of #2. We...
With-For-In-Through
I had a 7th grade English teacher named Mrs. Maddox, who told us that a preposition was essentially defined in the same way as by the manner a squirrel could relate to a tree.....the squirrel can go: over, under, to, in, around , through, to, behind, before, inside, up, down, within....... Preposition [prepəˈziSH(ə)n] NOUN grammar a word GOVERNING, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and EXPRESSING A RELATION to another word or element in the clause....... Those squirrels are important little things, aren't they? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SQUIRREL !!!!!!!!!! Why, yes, actually they are. We will...