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.
Shaky Systems
I was sitting next to a friend at a luncheon and the subject of teachers with guns in schools came up. She, a former teacher, said, "They took the Bible out of the classroom. Then they took paddles away from the teachers. Now they want to give teachers guns." What's wrong with this picture? We can't train students in the knowledge of the Lord and we can't discipline them, but when failures in these two means of molding character have been withdrawn and we're suffering from the consequences, we can kill them in self defense. And now, if news reports may be believed, some schools are putting...
His Glory in Our Story
Sharing one's story of recovery with others can be tremendously encouraging, even life changing, for some who might hear. Women in recovery at Titus 2 receive specific instruction on writing and sharing their witness through their own story while in classes there. They also get lots of practice. First they practice sharing with one another. They practice sharing in confidential groups at Celebrate Recovery. They hear lots of testimonies, too, at Celebrate Recovery, in small groups, at churches, and elsewhere. By the time they leave Titus 2, they will have a brief, powerful testimony to...
Recovery Resources Self-Assessment Scale as a Means of Kickstarting Transformational Healing
I have referenced before educator Dr. Ruby K. Payne and her book, Bridges Out of Poverty, that helped me so much to understand the hidden rules associated with the three broad socio-economic classes. Another book of hers, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, was also helpful in developing my awareness of internal and external resources that people either have within them or that they have access to through others. After working with homeless people in a day counseling center and doing job readiness counseling, I began to see how valuable it can be to have a discussion about one's...
Diakonia…….
There may be multiple ways to be ordained as clergy. But being ordained as a deacon, however it is accomplished, is not nearly as important as simply being obedient to God. And I have believed for 10 years that I was being obedient to God in following this call! On March 5, 2018 I, Cathy Byrd, completed my requirements for Deacon Ordination through Christian Leaders Institute and became associated with Christian Leaders Alliance as an ordained deacon. CLI and CLA are committed to the development of equipped ministry revival leaders in their local communities, many of them bi-vocational...
Pearly Gates
One of the issues we revisit regularly in recovery and discipling is the matter of suffering- why it is present, how we face it, consecrating it to God for His redemptive work through it, etc. Recently, I was struck with the fact that, in the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City, each of the 12 city gates is a single pearl. As I reflected on the means by which a pearl is created it seemed to me appropriate that the gates should be pearls. The mollusks that produce pearls do so over a 3-6 year period of repeatedly coating an irritating foreign object so that it eventually becomes a beautiful,...
Whatever You Do……..
Hey Mrs. Cathy! I wanted to forward this to you so that you might share it with the ladies at Titus 2! God never ceases to amaze me and make my heart smile!! I was talking to the ladies when we were sitting together about them getting jobs and how faithful God is to place you where you need to be when you need to be there. I told them about how hesitant I was about working at Lynn Haven Church doing janitorial work because I had just come out of a very different lifestyle where I was selling drugs and making plenty of money and I wasn't sure I wanted to be scrubbing toilets but God's plan...
Bring the Green, Hold the Gold
In one of J.D. Walt’s Lenten devotionals in his new book “This Is How We Know”, he shares a poem by Robert Frost: “Nothing Gold Can Stay”. Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day, Nothing gold can stay. I have long delighted in the diverse colors of spring, but mostly in the breathtaking array of greens. But when I read this poem, I realized how many plants are putting forth new leaves that are gold color at first. Here are a few of them that I...
Love Overcomes
Procrastinator's hope: "The nice thing about things that are urgent is that if you wait long enough they aren't urgent anymore." Amos Tversky, psychologist It is interesting how, when life goes off the rails, one can completely disengage from significant things like fines that are due, deadlines for case plan requirements, probation appointments, judge's orders, etc. There is a sense in which, once hope is lost and the motivation and means to address urgent matters slips away, nothing apparently matters any longer. As the women we work with discover, though, ignoring such matters does not...
Christian Spirituality or Feel-Good Syncretism?
Several people attempted to convince me of the value of the Enneagram in counseling 20 years ago. I wanted nothing to do with it. A spiritual friend I see occasionally lives and breathes its principles. For years I had heard nothing about it from anyone, with absolutely no regret for it not being a part of my life. Then this week it has shown up in several lines of sight, including the article referenced by the link below from World Magazine . The article is not promoting Enneagram. Author Russell St. John observes: "A search on the website of Christian Book Distributors yields more...
Life Patterns…..Repetitions of the Same or Growth Into Larger Purpose
Life today is so much more peaceful, calm, and joy-filled than it was a year ago and in the 4 years prior to that. So many life changes converged in that season of my life, from the time of the start of our home addition and my Father's death in 2013 to the end of my pursuit of deacon orders in The UMC last June. I could not adapt to all of the changes, losses, and challenges at once. My resilience was less than I had realized. I remembered, however, another similar time in my life as I approached 40, 20 years ago, when I went through a similar transition. That was a period of several years,...