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.
“..I’m Calling from Gov. Scott’s office…”
October 20, 2016 Imagine my surprise: "Rev. Byrd, I'm calling from Gov. Scott's office......" This is news shared with Titus 2 board members and instructors! The faithfulness you all have shown has helped make Titus 2 something to be proud of and given us a broader "territory" to share the power of faith-based life recovery! Titus 2 program director Cathy Byrd received a call today from a representative in Governor Rick Scott's office advising us that Titus 2 has been nominated for a Florida Champions of Hope Award. The awards are presented to outstanding faith-based organizations for best...
Narrative and Active Listening
"The truth of personal narrative is that being human can seem like an exercise in futility, sometimes right up to the last breath a person draws. The truth of personal narrative is that, no matter how compelling the story, no matter the suffering it entails, no matter the size of the audience gathered around the platform, watching, the story itself is not enough. Our own personal narrative fails to be illuminated when we remain trapped inside it. Yet here we are, all of us trapped on the internet, talking at once, telling our own story. It is not enough."...
Arks and New Beginnings
When a group of people attend a ministry conference, the conversations during breaks or over a meal are likely to include discussion of theological insights gleaned from the conference sessions. Such was the case Thursday. I was sharing lunch with a pastor and we were talking about our respective observations about some of the conference speakers’ key points. My lunch companion and I began to talk about connections in Scripture that were new insights for us. He shared a personal observation that Moses’ straw basket bed is a type of “ark”, as well as Noah’s stringently constructed wooden...
Praying for Charlotte….Lord, Hear Our Prayer
Those who forget the lessons of the past, or those who never learned them, are doomed to repeat them. I saw a photo meme tonight on Facebook that said, "If you blame Obama for our racial divide, hit LIKE." I didn't hit LIKE. I don't blame Obama. And I'm not sure what we have is truly a racial divide. Race has been, and continues to be, a source of conflict for some. It is not for me. I think expectations for racial harmony that were thrust upon Obama as president that were predicated simply on his race, were unrealistic from the beginning.....for several reasons. First, it was...
Prayer Prepares the Banquet
Today’s New Room Conference workshops that I attended were on prayer. I know that the Lord has had me working with a mentee on prayer in recent months most likely because of the oftentimes weak quality of my own prayer life. It has been an ebb and flow kind of thing for me most of my Christian life. Today’s sessions gave me much about which to reflect. When I got back to my resting place for the night I was tired and went right to bed. But as my brain began to drift to sleep, I had one of those simple single-frame visions with which the Lord has spoken to me before. It was an...
With All The Saints
Sermon- Carillon Beach Community Chapel - 9-18-16 Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4: 1-6, 11-16 I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.………. And he gave some as apostles, others as prophets,...
The Food Stamp Economy and the Paucity of Virtue
Over the years that I have been working with individuals who are homeless and women in recovery I have learned a lot about the food stamp economy. There are individuals who survive satisfactorily, in their current way of thinking, on the things they can buy with their monthly food stamp allotment, especially if multiple card holders are living under one roof and pooling their resources. And, although the funds accessible through the EBT card are supposed to only be redeemable for food at authorized food outlets, they are used to barter for all kinds of things. In my personal experience...
Ten Reasons Not To Be The Perfect Employee
Over the last 40 years I have worked in a variety of corporate environments dominated by men- in an office full of cotton brokers, in medical laboratories with male supervisors and owners, in field sales with major corporate organizations, in commercial insurance calling on almost exclusively male business owners, and elsewhere. I learned through work experience and in marriage that if I didn't set appropriate boundaries and speak my mind, I could easily convey wrong impressions or experience humiliation and resentment from feeling disrespected or used. I have been dismissed as "the little...
Don’t Quit Before the Miracle
Students at Titus 2 and others of us this week have been considering ‘resilience’. Resilience is defined as “the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like. Synonyms include buoyancy, rebound, bounce, flexibility, elasticity, adaptability, and staying power. Resilience is one of those underlying attributes that enables perseverance in life. Resilience is built into our physical bodies in many miraculous ways. I have seen it recently in a friend who...
To Know and Follow Hard After God
I use the Priscilla Shirer YouTube video entitled “Who’s Your Daddy” (link below) with our Titus 2 ladies as we talk about the attributes and character of God and what each one knows about God. A significant goal for our program is to enlarge each student's awareness, understanding and personal experience of God in order to foster greater trust in God. We also use a YouTube video entitled "Jesus in Every Book of the Bible" (link below) and a handout from the "Experiencing God" curriculum by Henry Blackaby that lists over 500 attributes/titles of God and the scripture references. God is...