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.
Christian counseling…..
“There are remedies for the soul's ills in the Christian faith. Both psychiatry and psychotherapy literally mean "soul healing" (psychology literally means "the study of the soul"). Until recently, soul healing was understood to be part of the church's responsibility. However, for the last 125 years, a secular framework has dominated both fields, while much of the church drifted away from its calling to help heal the soul. Today, apart from some popular biblical counseling literature, a vigorous Christian agenda is virtually unheard of. Meanwhile, it has been difficult for believers to...
Flying Blind….literally and as metaphor
Several years ago a friend of mine suddenly went blind, with no other symptoms. She was rushed to the hospital where it was discovered she'd suffered a stroke. Gradually she regained about 30-40% of her vision. A news report came out this past week about a pilot of a private plane who experienced a similar sudden loss of vision due to a stroke. What could have been disastrous was, instead, heroic with the help of a military pilot who coached the blinded pilot into a safe landing.As our Celebrate Recovery group met tonight one of the ladies told us about hearing a pastor on the radio talking...
Another time around…..
When I have attended United Methodist events, the prayer rooms all seem to have a common feature- a labyrinth. It seems that some with a spiritual bent all seem to think that we should be walking the labyrinth to connect with God."The term labyrinth is often used interchangeably with maze, but modern scholars of the subject use a stricter definition. For them, a maze is a tour puzzle in the form of a complex branching passage with choices of path and direction; while a single-path (unicursal) labyrinth has only a single path to the center. A labyrinth has an unambiguous through-route to the...
From one end to the other…….
I have been a student of the Matthean Beatitudes scripture since my own Holy Spirit-directed encounter with it several years ago. I have had several conversations with my associate pastor, who prefers the Lukan rendition of "blessings and woes". He is from a younger generation that is more motivated spiritually toward justice issues and I am from a generation which has taken up the cause of personal spirituality in a more inner focused way. While I have studied the two versions side by side, it was not until this weekend that God has given me a greater appreciation for why the two versions...
Like a roaring lion….
A few weeks ago I was listening to a program on NPR and heard part of an essay about an encounter with a mountain lion being read by Craig Childs, a desert dwelling naturalist from Arizona who's written a book on his encounters with animals-. The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild. As I looked it up on the internet, I found the original account of his experience, written in the July 24, 2006 issue of High Country News. Read it here: https://www.hcn.org/issues/326/16437 "Prey at the waterhole"Childs gives us a gripping first hand report of facing a predatory lion face to face....
How God works…..
This week I had another specific example of how God works in my life....how He shows his providential hand and his love. After three weeks of driving a man to the county's remote jail annex site weekly to visit his girlfriend, he was jailed, too.....both of them on violation of probation. So, on Monday I found myself visiting her to let her know what was going on and to make arrangements with her to get their small apartment cleaned out since the landlord was evicting them. I left the jail with a list of things to do on their behalf, as if I needed more things to add to my already lengthy...
‘Round and around and around…..
While in a psychology class, one of the assignments was to draw a picture that represented one's life. I drew the doodle shown here. The hand with the heart represents, for me, God's love and providential work in my life. The other symbols are medical symbols for "man" (lower left), "woman" (middle right), "birth" (lower right), "death" (cross at top), and "infinity" (figure eight top left which also represents eternity). The spiral is a doodle I have often drawn, but I didn't have a specific meaning for it, except that I have tended to think of the experiences of my life somewhat like a...
Cracked pot or wet clay…..
Recently, I was going through some worship books I'd accumulated from participating in weekends at a Christian retreat camp. I came across one with notes in the back cover that I'd written on April 22, 2005. It was during a Friday morning communion service in the chapel at Blue Lake. I remembered that morning clearly for what it marked in my spiritual journey. Since my first trip to Blue Lake in 1992, almost every time I came to communion, I experienced a feeling of brokeness, of repentance. I had come to think of it as the shattering of this jar of clay that God would periodically have to...
Busy weeks (continued)…..
September 1st I started with "minimum full time" (32 hours a week) at the church. My hours at the homeless shelter dropped to 15 a week. It's been challenging to manage my schedule for best use of my time, but I'm feeling better about it after the second week.This week, too, I received certification as a recovery support specialist with the State of Florida. And I learned that my graduate diploma is in the mail from Troy University. I had met with the District Board of Ministry last week, too, and got the go-ahead to begin work toward ordination as a deacon in the United Methodist Church....
A Servant’s Heart…..
This weekend I was challenged to think about gifts-based service and servants in the Bible, besides Jesus. As I reflected on various individuals, I was considering the various gifts of each person. One gift that I focused on was the gift of helping. Many people with this gift are very quiet and low key types of people. At any kind of church gathering we generally hear the high profile people- those on the stage or those who serve in leadership roles- being acknowledged. But what about those who made sure the tissue boxes in the rest room were full …and that the fruit on the food trays was...