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.
Imagine a country……
As part of a graduate school course in counseling multicultural populations, I have been reading from an anthology of essays on various aspects of diversity. There is an essay by Holly Sklar, a Knight-Ridder op-ed columnist, entitled "Imagine a Country" written in 2006 and published in this anthology under the section on The Economics of Race, Class, and Gender. Sklar spends eight and a half pages inviting readers to "imagine" a country with a variety of social and economic ills, never describing the country but comparing it very unfavorably to a number of other countries- Jamaica,...
The enemy within…
"The enemy within" is the title of a book recommended to me by my daughter in law. She and I compare notes regularly on things we're learning in our respective journeys of faith.As I was preparing for teaching at a Friday night Celebrate Recovery! event, I was reviewing Genesis 3:6 (Eve's temptation in the garden), Matthew 4 :2-10 (Jesus' temptation in the wilderness) and 1 John 2:16 (John's summary of the nature of sin, characterized as "lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the pride of life"). One of the challenges with people in a recovery program is getting them to see that the...
Compressed semesters…..
I have gotten started in a masters program at a local campus of an out of state university. The semesters are compressed into 9 weeks and the year consists of 5 semesters. It will enable me to complete my desired degree in less that a year and a half. But what a price one pays for this fast track! I am swamped with required reading and weekly papers to be written and semester projects that have to be fast tracked, as well! Trying to juggle all the assignments and check off all the requirements for course completion has me really struggling to adjust my calendar and schedule to get it all...
The student attracts the teacher……
For a number of years as I was growing in my faith, Dr. Charles Stanley's teaching spoke to me with such power and conviction that it seemed he was reading my thoughts and preaching to me and me alone. It was eerie to me then that he always seemed to know just where I was and what I needed. I wrote to his ministry at one point to thank him for his teaching and expressed that sense. I received a polite response for someone on his staff and was told that they hear regularly from people who have that sense of very personal instruction through his teaching.Then I began to use the devotional book...
Dying moments, new beginnings…..
"Dying moments, new beginnings" is a phrase that describes a communion celebration that many of us associated with The Walk to Emmaus will recognize. It defines what we, in our Christian lives, do again and again as we experience the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit. Time and time again we find ourselves dying to some aspect of the flesh and beginning new life in yet another aspect of our spiritual selves in the Spirit as we grow into the likeness of Christ.As I begin a new phase of my life, retraining for a new career, I am having to turn loose of some things that have been part of my...
Connecting the dots…..
Jill Carattini is a senior writer for the Ravi Zacharias Int'l Ministries in Atlanta, Ga. I enjoy her columns greatly. She always seems to express so beautifully things that I have thought or felt.Her column today speaks of the delightful transparency of children, how you can see it on their faces as they "make connections from one dot of information to another." That is one of the joys of being a grandparent. One has the time and distance with which to watch that process happening. It seemed to have gotten lost in the daily demands and responsibilities of raising our own children.On a...
Not a case of “whatever floats your boat”…..
I was reading recently from How People Change by Timothy Lane and David Tripp. In it they describe some of the manifestations of "Christian externalism", their description of the things people do to try to fill the "gospel gap" that subverts their identity as Christians and keeps them from understanding the present work of God in their lives. They describe formalism, legalism, mysticism, activism, Biblicism, psychology-ism, and social-ism as attractive pretensions, plausible lies that look real enough to be the real thing but are not.They go on to state that each of these -isms is appealing...
What I said isn’t what you heard….
I had the opportunity last week to perform a comedy routine at a women's retreat. One of the lines in the routine has to do with friendship. It goes like this: "Friends are a lot like a parachute. If they're not there the first time that you need them, odds are you won't be needing them again."I thought it was a good line and would elicit some laughs. However, when I delivered the line, the women just looked at one another with puzzled looks, so I moved on to the next line.Afterward, I sat down to have lunch with them and discovered the reason for the puzzled looks. I had delivered the line...
There, by and with the grace of God, shall go I…….
In a class on adult ministry that I am taking we are in the unit on senior adults. There is a self-awareness inventory that asks us to indicate on a scale of 1-5 the number that best expresses our feelings between two extremes about the statement, "When I think of older people, I think of people who are....." and then lists seventeen attributes and their corresponding opposites, such as kind/uncaring, friendly/grumpy, rigid/tolerant, fast/slow, greedy/ generous, etc. The numbers correlate to "1= strong agreement with the word on the left" to "5= strong agreement with the word on the right"....
Smaller is……..
I have had the spacious, dual-bowled, mirror-walled, garden- tubbed, glass-enclosure showered bathroom. Now, in our little two bedroom 1973 lakeside cottage we have two very efficient little 6'X8'-ish bathrooms. And I have rediscovered the joy of 'small' living.I can have an entire bathroom guest-ready in 5 minutes! Using only 6 paper towels, a can of Comet, a spray bottle of bathroom cleaner and a toilet bowl brush I can tidy up so fast even I can appear to be a model housekeeper! One paper towel for the mirror, one for the countertop and sink, one for the toilet seat and lid, and three for...