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.
Red Threads and “Help Me” Faith Versus “Have Me” Faith
Dr. Sandra Richter's anointed teaching, including The Epic of Eden, appears to have many people seeing the continuity of biblical themes from Genesis to Revelation more clearly. In a recent group conversation about seeing God's plan in Scripture, I made a reference to the "red thread of redemption" in the context of a larger discussion about "Help me" versus "Have me" kinds of faith. One poster in the devotional discussion observed that having grown up in a particular faith tradition, she appreciated the ways in which it had developed her spiritually. She added, "But I was never taught that...
Rooting Out Idols
In a Facebook discussion there was conversation about "idolatry." Such discussions always take me back to the ways in which God has dealt with it in my life. I had sought deacon ordination in The UMC starting in 2008 and was discontinued in 2017 after a tumultuous 3 years with the ordination board committees. I knew that God had called me to deacon ordination and I knew why. But I also knew from the first interview with the ordination board committee as a provisional presenting for ordination that it would never happen. God showed it to me clearly right then, right there, saying in my...
Boundary Resistance Role in Developmental Delays
Respecting the Limits (Boundaries) of Others - Boundary Resistance Role in Developmental Delays(Adapted from “Boundaries” by Cloud and Townsend; Boundaries and Children chapters) Each child needs to learn to accept the limits of parents, siblings, and friends. It is important in learning the world does not revolve around the child. The ability to accept limits teaches us to take responsibility for ourselves. Others will not always be available to us, at our beck and call. It helps us to become inwardly directed instead of externally by circumstances around us. It helps us learn to shoulder...
Jesus Ate With Sinners……
One meme on Facebook offered this: "Jesus sat down and ate with sinners, did he not? That doesn't mean he supported what they did. But it also didn't keep him from loving them." I have been pondering the nature of godly love and what unconditional love means..... It has led me to lots of thinking about the difference between unconditional love and holding an individual accountable for healthy boundaried fellowship. I think Jesus practiced both. Yes, Jesus had fellowship with sinners over meals, in conversations at wells or in the Temple, and elsewhere. But he did more.. Jesus offered...
Sharing Deeply
Why we include emotional literacy, values education, sharing our lives as well as our testimony, and the importance of interdependent living at Titus 2: The Most Private is Often What Resonates the Strongest The pyschologist Carl Rogers, a person who would know quite well the interior lives of others, has this to say of our inmost thoughts: I have most invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence, most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many people. It has led me to...
Titus 2 Partnership, Inc 2019 Annual Report and Disclosure
Annual Report and Disclosure for 2019: Titus 2's ministry is a state-incorporated, 501c3 authorized small, 5 bed intensive discipleship ministry for women with life-limiting dysfunctions including substance abuse, mental health challenges, unresolved grief and trauma, child state dependency cases, and more. Generally, we can work in residential life recovery with 12-15 women in an average year. 2019 was, by no standard of measure, "average" due to the lengthy (and continuing) recovery from October 10, 2018 Hurricane Michael. There were months in which we had no use or limited use of the...
Singing Psalm 23
Years ago the Lord put a tune in my heart and taught me to sing Psalm 23 to the tune. Later I discovered that the tune is the Welsh Blessing and it is in one of the older UMC hymnals with the hymn lyrics “Sent Forth By God’s Blessing.” The Lord put that tune in my mind at one point and I just kept humming it for weeks, then all of a sudden the words of Psalm 23 “dropped” into the tune. I wrote them down as I was singing it and I located the music somewhat through chance, when I heard a UMC children’s curriculum DVD playing in a children’s Sunday School class I was teaching in 1995 with the...
Singing Psalm 37
I had not ever heard this tune before the Lord set my heart to singing it in 2002, then dropped the words of Psalm 37:3-5 into it: I grew up singing Psalm arrangements in choir, many of which are no longer readily available, as I have tried to find some of them to reconnect with those tunes as an adult for my private worship time. In 2002 as I was preparing to lay direct a women’s Emmaus walk at Blue Lake, there was a tune that kept playing in my head for weeks. I had not known it before, it just came to me and I hummed it off and on. As I worked on preparation for the walk, I selected Psalm...
Thinking About a “Word-Shaped World”
God spoke all creation into being. I was reading a discussion thread about journaling. Many people journal their thoughts about their study of the Bible or about their observations of God at work in the world. In the discussion group individuals were advised to “know the reason for their journaling.” For me journaling was once a safe place to vent to God, unload my emotional baggage and explore my hidden self. When I became more attuned to myself and God and more willing to be vulnerable and used by God, my journaling became about sharing my journey and what I was learning about God with...
Accountability, Integrity, and Honesty in recovery
Accountability- the quality or state of being accountable; especially : an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions. Integrity- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness; the state of being whole and undivided; the condition of being unified, unimpaired, or sound in makeup; internal consistency or lack of corruption; trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility, or pledge. Proven honesty that is trustworthy over time. Life recovery must begin...