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.
Friends Never Leave Our Hearts
Bill and I have been in a long season of transition over the last three years. Yesterday as I prepared a home cooked meal and last evening as we enjoyed a leisurely dinner and conversation with friends, I realized that life is more stable and less stressed than it has been in a long time. The students of Titus 2 are in excellent positions to complete their life recovery plans over the next few months. The gratitude I feel to God for his close presence with us and for speaking through his Word, his Holy Spirit, godly friends, and within the circumstances of our lives is immeasurable. As I...
Knowing God’s Name…..Knowing God
“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory in the heavens. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Psalm 8:1-4 Our current church study of The Prayer of Jabez has reminded me that as we read through Scripture we can see the importance of names. We can also see in Scripture that God has many Names and descriptions and each reveals Him in a different way. One of the...
Genogram as Community-Building Tool
Over the years I have observed genogram discussion sessions with Dr. Michael Carns, a skilled family and marriage counseling educator and practitioner with over 35 years’ experience, as he invited the Titus 2 students into this tool of self-discovery. A genogram is a family diagram, which can be thought of as an elaboration of the family tree. Genograms provide a way of mapping family patterns. In the sessions students, guided by Dr. Carns, look at the family dynamics from the standpoint of one’s relationship to others in things like ages and age differentials, sibling birth order,...
Undervalued Treasures Devotional
Sadly, this is one of the most common realities that I as a life recovery counselor experience, the deep sense of unworthiness for the good things that God desires us to have because one has believed what has been said by someone who failed to see the value of a person. God says differently. From Ron Hutchcraft devotional #7669: Undervalued Treasures June, 2, 2016 Our son, over the years, was a dedicated baseball card collector. I mean dedicated. He was even dealing for baseball cards on his honeymoon! Hello. But it was worth it. He met a man who was selling his entire collection....
Peacemaking versus Peacekeeping Part 2
Ecclesiastes 7:8, 9 . . .. Do not hurry yourself in your spirit to become offended, for the taking of offense is what rests in the bosom of the stupid ones. In The Peacemaker by Ken Sande, he diagrams the various responses available to Christians in the midst of interpersonal or church conflict. The top 90% of the 180 degree range goes from overlooking an offense on the left to accountability on the right. Between those are a number of options that all are within the range that he describes as biblical. Outside that 90%, to the left, are the avoidant passive responses- denial. flight, and...
No “Chance” Encounters
This morning I got a call from a person I've been assisting for 3 weeks through parish community outreach and case management who had come to Panama City with a referral for a new job. The couple raised 4 children in a Methodist Church out of state. After the spouse and three of the four children died in tragic circumstances over the last 7 years, the individual was broken, aimless, and angry with God, had abandoned the Church after the spouse's death in 2009 but now had realized that faith lived through a godly spouse and children saved and nurtured in the Church instead of based on a...
Sweet Kitty Patti
We've had a sweet little female feral cat for 13-14 years, Patti. She was a runt that got abandoned on the roof of WMBB and when the operations crew went up to run her off, she jumped off into the shrubbery. She was pulled out of the shrubbery and dropped into a large box. What a little fighter! Bill called me to come get her and she went straight to the vet for shots and spaying. Even when released after recovery, she stayed around. Since that time I think she's been captured maybe three or four times for shots. We finally just left her alone to find her place on the fringe of the Byrd...
The Proof of Truth Is What Comes Through At the End
I am part of a 365 Bible Challenge study group. We were finishing up the Job section recently. Among the group's members there was a conversation by one who had felt persecuted by some individuals in her workplace. She was asked in the group why she felt that this was coming against her when she didn't appear to have done anything to warrant the actions directed at her. Her response was, I must have ticked someone off. One of the group said, "Do you know who?" Her reply was, "Yes, I think I do." Later she said she reflected further on that question, "Do you know who?" And she said as she...
Sifted
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and satan also came among them. ......... Job 1:6 Job was sifted by satan in an attempt to make him curse God. Job cursed the day of his birth, and he argued with his wife and his friends, but he didn’t curse God even in his suffering and his inability to see the truth of why it was happening. Job remained faithful to God. He remained in honest, though pleading, conversation with God and God with Job. And even when he failed to get the answers he sought, Job did not give up. He praised God. And...
Zebras and Harness Racers
Zebras and Harness Racers….. In late summer of 2014 and for much of the next year I experienced a multitude of frustrations and confusion in attempting to connect with some individuals in ministry beyond my local community and church, I experienced a number of circumstances that left me feeling isolated and alone. I shared with several friends and pastors at the time that I felt like a zebra…….no longer really a lay person and not really yet clergy either……but rather some kind of “other” breed in pursuit of my role as a deacon in the United Methodist Church. At times I simply cried out to...