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.
Dying to Know the Truth…….
5-14-17 How many of us, as we grew older and, hopefully, wiser, discovered that our mothers, and our fathers, maybe, just maybe, actually DID know more than we did? I was the only member of my birth family to attend college and for a while I thought that somehow gave me an advantage over my parents and siblings in terms of knowledge and wisdom. Over the years, I have come to see that, while there were some things that I learned in college that my family didn’t know, it was the things that I had learned in my family that were...
Welcoming Jesus to the Dining Table….A Different Kind of Social Gospel
I was in a restaurant with a good-sized group of Christian women, each of us paying separately. We had a private room and one waiter. When people began leaving he got confused and accidentally gave my bill to someone else who had left earlier. When I got ready to leave, he realized his mistake. The person he gave my bill to had a larger bill and he knew he'd messed up. I could see his immediate distress. So I took the other woman's bill, paid it and told him it was not a problem....that she and I are friends and neither of us minded. He looked so relieved I almost wanted to hug...
“I love her so much I’d die for her….”
Can someone explain this to me, please? I have had more than a few women tell me, when asked about their family status.....Children? "Yes." Marital status? "Single" Divorced? "No. I don't believe in divorce." Okay. In our culture today one can "believe" in having children outside of marriage and having as many intimate paramours as one cares to have, but not marriage because one "doesn't believe in divorce." It seems to me the emphasis is on the wrong thing in this scenario. Why not focus on making commitments and making marriages work instead of avoiding marriage because of the risk...
The Marriage Box
The Marriage Box The Marriage Box Most people get married believing a myth, that marriage is a beautiful box full of all the things they have longed for: Companionship, sexual fulfillment, intimacy, friendship. The truth is that marriage, at the start, is an empty box. You must put something in before you can take anything out. There is no love in marriage; love is in people, and people put it into marriage. There is no romance in marriage; people have to infuse it into their marriages. A couple must learn the art and form the habit of giving, loving, serving, praising - keeping the...
Simon or Peter?
I've always been intrigued by Simon Peter's name change dubbed by Jesus and the way in which, at particular times of reprimand, Jesus would resort to his former natural flesh-life name and when Jesus was seeing something more promising and worthy of favored note, Jesus would use his latter spiritual-life name. We can all flip-flop in our sense of self from time to time and find ourselves stamped with one or the other moniker. I suspect that Simon Peter understood how Jesus was using his name(s), the same way we as children knew what it meant when mother used the full name...."Cathy Charlene...
Isaacs and Motives…..Laying Them Down as a Sacrifice to the Lord
Christ’s teaching of the authority one has to make the choice of surrender or not, the free will of each of us, and one’s knowledge that because of the power of that choice to surrender, anyone may come to the Father through Christ, even those who offend the religious elite, is what got Christ crucified. It offended them when he said it in the synagogue in Nazareth after his baptism and it offended them here at the end of him ministry, described in John 10:13-19
“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, 15 even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. 18 No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.” 19 A division occurred again among the Jews because of these words.
Matters of motive, authority, sacrifice, surrender, free will, and who gets in and who doesn’t…….Such things divide those who pursue the letter of the law at the expense of the spirit of the law. .
Reprise On Being an EGR (Extra Grace Required)
Reprise On Being an EGR (Extra Grace Required) At least two or three times a week I check in on my weblog, www.disciplerofself.org, as I prepare a post. There is an application with it that keeps stats on visitors to the weblog…no names or emails or any identifying data…..just numbers of people who check it out. It’s not a high volume enterprise, or an enterprise at all…….just the ponderings of a heart that desires connection with God and others and to share how those connections affect me and those I love. It’s really more of a journal for me than anything else. Some family members and...
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...