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.
Vashti, Xerxes and The “All My Friends” Method of Counseling
(This was written by me in July 2005, a year and a half before I went back to graduate school for counseling. When I did, I chose a social services curriculum and to go a biblical route instead of a licensed mental health counseling route because of what I understood of the state licensing board’s limitation on use of faith in mental health counseling and prohibitions against evangelism and “first use” of faith directives. ) “Our Wednesday morning group is studying the book of Esther. If you recall, Ahasuerus (aka Xerxes) was having a rowdy night with the boys and commanded Queen Vashti...
Boundary Setting In Relationships of Abuse
There are occasions when meek, emotionally-controlled, wounded women come to Titus 2 who have been subjected to abuse in one or more forms- emotional, physical, financial, sexual, psychological, spiritual, or relational. They often have learned to be "people pleasers" at the expense of their own personhood. They are generally incapacitated, too, by anxiety and fear. Through prayer, Bible study, classes, counseling, and mentoring they discover their identity and value in Christ, learn how to set boundaries and say "no" appropriately, confront their fears, and stand up for...
When God Breaks Down Walls
I was visiting with someone about recent spiritual growth that had been brought about by some circumstances that were difficult. She experienced great growth in her faith and ability to trust God through it. Her insights had led her deeper in the Bible and prayer, but she has been somewhat alone in what she was learning there. She shared some deep and profoundly meaningful experiences with Christ she’d had and said she had not shared those things with anyone. I hear that frequently in counseling with the students at Titus 2. They are fearful they will be laughed at or dismissed as...
Lessons in the Wilderness
Corrie Ten Boom: You'll never learn that God is all you need until God is all you have. I have talked to several people in recent weeks who had all discovered this truth through difficult circumstances....losses due to death of loved ones or divorce, relocations that were difficult, alienation in relationships....one thing after another led to feeling alone, isolated, being in the "wilderness". Each of these people were Christians who came to the conclusion through this wilderness season that God was using the perception of one's "aloneness" in relationship to others to create a deeper...
Complegalitarianism…..Both/And, Not Either/Or
As I talk with a number of female friends, students, those with whom I journey in spiritual education or spiritual counseling, etc. this issue of appropriately biblical marriage dynamics comes up again and again. As 45 years of marriage will attest, these can be turbulent waters. And in many of those conversations I, like this author, Kelli Trujillo, have come to see that an either/or construct suggested by these two schools of thought - egalitarian versus complementarian - is not helpful. It is more of a both/and situation and each marriage has to find the balance between the two.......
God’s Self Revelation to Us
Women familiar with Titus 2 know that we do a lot of work on knowing God through his self-revelations of his names, attributes, and character in the Bible. Ancient Hebrews were said to have over 3000 names for God that reflected these attributes. I had done a single session brainstorming activity with about a dozen women one time and we came up with 147 that we ourselves had experienced! Henry Blackaby, in his Experiencing God study, has a scripture-referenced list of these characteristics that numbers over 550. One pastor I know has listed over 1100 in his search of the scriptures! I...
Burning Bushes
I love this image: A dry scrubby shrub, just standing there as if it could do anything more, upon which God bestows the Fire of His Spirit to attract the attention of a curious meandering shepherd…. to speak from its branches …to invite and ignite one who had no idea the ways in which that same Fire of His Spirit would whip up a flame in him, as well, to blaze without being consumed….. a small unbundled handful of kindling used to spark a bonfire that would engulf the walls of the Enemy’s prison fortress and even parch a path through a roiling sea to clear a path to freedom for his...
The Wick Is Smoldering, The Flame Will Come…..A Reflection on Easter and Pentecost
As I was preparing my sermon for Easter Sunday on the boldness of the followers of Christ that came from their witnessing the empty tomb and resurrected Christ, I came across this reminder, an interesting note regarding Christ's disciples and the Holy Spirit: John 20 tells us: “On the evening of that first day of the week, (that Sunday evening, after Christ's Resurrection) when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and...
Neediness
I've come to believe through observing many people that no one gets out of childhood without some scars resulting from the perception that they were not loved the way they wanted to be loved by one or more significant people in their lives...or even from having been loved in ways that were actually quite destructive before they even knew what real love is. Unless one experiences the kind of love that comes only through Christ, she will continue to suffer additional wounds and to think of love as a needy child does.
Easter Sunday 2017 Sermon- Not All Ran Away
Luke 1:1-3 “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you…” On the night of the Passover, Jesus and his disciples, except for Judas, went together to the hillside garden outside Jerusalem. Judas came shortly afterward with the Roman soldiers who arrested Jesus. Scriptures tell us all of...