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.
The Big 4-0
40 Days: From Poverty To Purpose When confronted with desperate poverty of spirit one comes face to face with the brokenness of her life, and mourns the death of illusion and facade that hid the truth, where she is comforted and invited into a healing and redeeming journey with the meek and lowly Christ....... In hungering and thirsting for righteousness, they shall then be satisfied..... and what follows is mercy to the merciful, purity of heart through which God is made manifest, peacemaking by the sons and daughters of God, and power to stand in the face of any assault from...
Recovery Rationales
Just an observation......double-minded thinking reflected in memes about addiction: In one post: "Addicts are good people.....they are victims of a disease and they can't help it." In the very next post "Recovery ...is a choice, a decision, an action." In one post "....don't hurt them, don't judge them." In the very next post "If your addicted loved one.is angry with you, you might be saving their life." Different recovery programs have different paradigms and approaches, but each program/addiction recovery professional should be consistent in the paradigm from which it operates. Then...
Solitary Places
"Into the solitary place we must walk with Jesus to learn the art of intimacy with God...... But in the biblical narrative, the words desert and wilderness are reflecting into Israel’s forty-year journey in the wilderness, wandering in covenant struggle with the God who brought them up out of Egypt. The desert, the wilderness, was to be a place of purification, of reorientation, of ongoing discovery of Israel’s true name and vocation. And they failed, time and time again, as a people. In the wild, God can get at us—without the din and noise and activity and relationships and social media...
Covid-19: Truths, At Last
When Bill and I got Covid-19, 2 things were very clear. He was having a lot more respiratory problems with it than I was and it made my blood pressure drop so much I had to go off my anti-hypertensive meds for over a week. So, several months later when I watched one of those pirated videos that made the rounds person-to-person on direct messenger, one that had occurred among some doctors in a meeting in Europe had caught my attention. Their observation had to do with the virus' impact on ACE receptors in various tissues of the body.... Where are ACE receptors found? The ACE2 receptors are...
Worry Sin?
Philippians 4:7 (The Message): "It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life!" One of the ways that you know Jesus is at the center of your life is you worry less. Worry is a sign that something has replaced him as the central focus of your life. (From Rick Warren) Recently, a friend and I were discussing a particular Bible study by a well-known (and, at times, controversial) pastor. In the Bible study the author stated out of the gate that "worry is a sin.". My friend and I considered that statement for a few minutes. He had also discussed it...
Broken Cisterns or Gauges for Living Water?
An observer of the Asbury Outpouring asked of another who wrote about it like a farmer measuring rainfall, "How do we discern true out pourings. Is it only subjective/emotional? Many are commenting that the reality of it will not be evident for some time to come. Just curious. Your father used a rain gauge, what is our measurement?" Here is my own observation in that regard: ( It is)....the daily measure of a life lived in the Spirit..... What am I able to show at the end of each day as a libation drink offering poured out to God for what I thought and how I responded in bringing His Holy...
FAE and The Need For Mercy
Sarah Westfall writes beautifully about a human failing called "Fundamental Attribution Error." Most of us get caught up in a FAE at one time or another. It may be in an incidental momentary yank of the steering wheel as one overcompensates for a momentary lapse in focus that can become a spin-out and even a full head-on collision with an unanticipated reality later. Mercy is our only way out of a FAE...... God's mercy in helping us see our error...... our mercy toward ourselves for having succumbed to it..... and our mercy toward others whom we judged without all the facts because of our...
Jesus Revolution
I turned 69 last week. I was 15, in Southwest GA, in 1969 when the events portrayed in this movie were going on. I saw it around the fringes. But the longing that drove it was present in me, too. It would be a long journey of 23 years before the longing in me was satisfied. I took a 60 yo friend who struggled with alcohol and homelessness for a number of years to the movie "Jesus Revolution" yesterday. She had said how much she wanted to see it. She now has gotten her life back on track thanks to the work of Christ in her life. As we headed home from the theatre she said quietly, with tears...
LIFE: Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.
A prayer partner, close confidential friend and I have a particular interest in scientific evidence of God's work in creation, including some aspects of biblical numerology or what the Hebrews call "sacred geometry.". She had sent me a brief video that detailed an interesting piece of genetic research about a repeating "fractal," or numeric sequence in the disulfide bridges that hold our double-stranded DNA together in its helical shape. We talked about this genetic molecular phenomenon and how its implications for Divine Creation (or Intelligent Design) are similar to those suggested by...
Gnats, Camels, and Pharisees
Someone asked me a few years ago about a quote attributed to Jesus, wanting to know the precise source and wording used in Scripture. The caller had heard the phrase at a funeral and wanted to remember exactly what it was this deceased friend had been heard to say often through the years. As we talked tonight about “do not murder” and the letter of the law in a physical sense and the spirit of the law in a broader sense of not harming another’s reputation or assaulting their dignity and worth, I was reminded of this phrase again. To "strain a gnat and swallow a camel" is to focus on...