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.
Becoming Perfect-Butterfly Style
In our ministry we relate the spiritual growth of a person to that of a butterfly’s life cycle: first is the initial stage-the egg. It contains all the potential that will be needed to become what God intended. As it becomes an immature caterpillar it eats, grows and molts as it moves toward its full size, much like we do as we consume the things of life around us and grow in the ways necessary. Once at full physical size one recognizes it needs a change and enters into a cocoon stage. Our ladies’ time in life recovery we call their “cocoon” stage. When it begins those outside cannot see the...
Spiritual Hunger (Updated August 13, 2022)
Physical hunger and Spiritual hunger are not the same. Physical hunger will continue until one's appetite is satiated. Spiritual hunger is the opposite. You lose your appetite by neglecting it. If one is not spiritually fed, the more she doesn't eat, the more she loses the desire altogether. One must learn to spiritually feed herself and know the necessity of spiritual nourishment for herself and where to find the choicest morsels........ However, with both the physical appetite and the spiritual appetite, the more you eat, the hungrier you get. What do you do in the twilight zone when you...
My Promised Land
Toby Mac has a song “Promised Land” that asks “Where’s my promised land?” When God pointed my vision to a plowed field on 3/20/1997 he began my journey to find my Promised Land. What God has shown me is that it is my own life lived in Christ that IS my Promised Land…. It is not a place defined by legal institutions’ complex and ancient property rights laws or by how long it has been passed down from parent to child…. My Promised Land is timeless, unbound by space or surveyors’ marker stakes. God enlarges the territory of those who look to Him for that place of promise….. No matter how long...
Stages of Faith Development
(The header photo is a downed pine near the school gym where my church met for a year and a half after Hurricane Michael. From the road it looked like rays of sun radiating from its smiley face center!) Charles Westerhoff, a Christian educator, described spiritual formation like the development of rings of a tree… each ring is the building block, the substrate for the next. That tiny sapling, sustained in the nurture of the family, its first identity arising from the other trees around it, and its sapling marrow becomes the substrate and strength for the next season’s rings forming...
Patterns in Relationships: Toward Interdependence
Patterns in Relationships A simple way to visualize relational patterns, leading to understanding the pattern that Christ intends through participation in spiritually intimate and accountable community within the Church Cathy Byrd, MS CRSS HEALTHY PARENT-CHILD DEPENDENCE: One or two mature and differentiated adults provide stability for a child until the child matures into the ability to differentiate and stand on his own. DEPENDENCE (or CO-DEPENDENCE): One or both parties lean upon the other, usually in a way and to an extent that the supportive person is not intended by God or able to...
Benchmarking Mental Health Practices
I have had the opportunity recently to talk to 2 mental health professionals about our program at Titus. Our small mostly unknown little house is a healing balm for those who come here. Both of these MHP are partners in care for women we serve. In trying to briefly give them an overview of what we do I referenced the philosophy of Dr. Mark Ragins, a 30+ year psychiatrist among homeless in California. His book, which covers a lot of work with symptoms of psychosis, he and I share a general disregard for simply diagnosing based on symptoms and treating each symptom with medication after...
9/11/2001 Remembered
My lament….. I do not wish to relive every sad moment of 9/11 for the next 48 hours…… it is a trauma that remains emblazoned in the memories of many. And with events of the world today, it is an all too familiar reminder of humankind’s tendency to act inhumanely toward one another, a part of the human condition that reflects our world’s brokenness and disregard for God and his desire to redeem all things. And some days it seems the world has learned nothing from the horror of that week and all that has transpired since. So I will avoid all “news” sources and retreat into a favorite childhood...
Authentic Church
The problem with the church, any church, is not the church. It's the expectations that people bring to the church.... In other words, the ecclesiology of individuals, or what they believe about the church. I worked through my personal ecclesiology in the 90's as I experienced individuals' hypocrisy (including my own), a church's rejection of a pastor and his family, another church's process of self-evaluation and change and the extraordinary blessings of God that resulted, and my own evolving expectations (or attempts at reducing them) of people and institutions directed by people. I have...
Thanksgiving Memories
From a Thanksgiving Day past.... I was getting gas at Beeline yesterday and an older gentleman and I spoke to one another. I asked him if he was looking forward to a big meal on Thanksgiving Day. He said, "As long as Chow Time doesn't fold before then!" LOL! I had never realized how many people go out on Thanksgiving Day to eat! Po Folks was hopping today. I did notice, too, how many places were closed today..... I have not noticed as much promotion of early Black Friday shopping starting Thanksgiving Day, either. I'm grateful to see that there seems to be more recognition of the need to...
Remembrance As a Tool of Spiritual, Emotional, and Relational Healing
In Scripture we see regular references to "remembrance" and directions to "remember". Memories can hold keys to self-awareness, healing, and peace with God, within one's self, and even with others. Below is a link to an excellent resource from Biblical Counseling Coalition for considering how to work the practice of remembering into spiritual healing work. At Titus 2's life recovery program we also use an exercise in which individuals list memorable events from their lives and then write out a timeline of their lives. The Life Experience Timeline worksheet is modified from the SHAPE...