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.
Long-Haul Living
From 2/19/2022..... Another birthday. Another day of gratitude. In life for the long-haul.... Blessed to be living long enough to KNOW God’s redemption personally in so many ways , to see it in the lives of others, and to have been given the ability to see it at work in the larger scope of history and the world! Makes me wanna go on living forever.... Wait! I am! Thank you, Lord! “Life can be so difficult, so unfair, and unmercifully cruel. Bad things happen to good people, while good things happen to bad people. There is no understanding it or hope to make sense of it in any semblance of...
Poetry: Tolkien On Spring
I love the imagery of trees, green, spring things ...How wonderful is imagination that we can carry such things in our mind's eye even when they cannot be seen with the eyes!
Winds of Change
From 2/19/2022: I am in one of those weird spots in which I know God is doing something.... I can feel it in my bones...(Yes, I've gotten old enough to feel things in my bones!) There are definitely some things stirring. Can't put my finger on it, but I'm paying attention, Lord. And praying.... It's not like mid summer 2020 when I put before the Lord in prayer my urgency about the furious pace of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through our world and how it was bringing some people to absolute brokenness, others to absolute insanity, and others death. I cried out for relief .... "Isn't there a...
Reptilian Brain
Perhaps why satan is portrayed as a serpent in the garden????? Interestingly, as Dr. Curt Thompson talks about brain development, he describes the initial neurological development in humans as "reptilian"....it is the basic. elemental "lower" brain stem that controls autonomic reflexes- breathing, heartbeat, etc. and establishes our ability to survive physically. The tempter in the garden is described as a serpent, reptilian, cunning. He appeals to the basic "lower" instincts of the human condition.... to survive in the moment, to control one's own safety and exercise control over one's self...
What Are We Waiting For?
It draws me close to Christ, the way Jd Walt of seedbed.com's daily Wake Up Call takes us into the Word and gives us choice morsels which feed our spiritual appetites...... zooming into this scene for a close up of Jesus' hands filling the baskets and the disciples' dullness of fleshly vision turning to amazement of spiritual awakening as He feeds the multitude with a lad's lunch. Yes, I can see it in my mind's eye! Water to wine... A sack lunch to a feast.... Sick to whole.... Confined to free.... Lifeless to well.... Broken to restored.... Blind to seeing.... Asleep to awakened.... The...
Harvests In Every Season For All of Life
I had thought that God's blessing to "a thousand generations" of one who loved and was obedient meant chronological and biological generations taking hundreds of years that one person would never see, but that was promised to one person and gives hope to faithful followers ....just as Abraham became the biological father of the tribe and nation that, throughout the Old Testament and up until Jesus, was the actual physical fulfillment of God's promise of blessings to a "thousand generations", indeed to all the earth through Abraham. And from Jesus forward the covenant of blessing was...
Purpose
I am neither a theologian nor an academic. I am not called to preach. I am not called to persuade anyone. I am a follower of Jesus Christ and a lover of all the ways in which Christ is revealed. I am called to teach and want to share the ways in which God leads me to know Him through His Word, His Son, and His Spirit. I am not out to publish, compete against or argue with anyone, or become a public figure. I don't claim any special wisdom or revelation. I just want others to hear, know, love, understand and be "doers" of the Word in order to live abundantly in Christ and with one another in...
Blessing In Banding
What can be discovered in small accountable, confessional "banding" together (in the Wesleyan sense) for Christian spiritual growth: Romans 15:14 14 Personally I am convinced about you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, amply filled with all [spiritual] knowledge, and competent to admonish and counsel and instruct one another." Amplified Bible " I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another." ESV This is accomplished through the presence of the Holy Spirit,...
Attributed to George H.W.Bush
Tall Tower
Why is a water tank up high? It is pumped into from a well or collects rainwater to mete out to those in need within the reach of its flow. Then it releases water vertically downward with enough force that when water hits the bottom it is forced out horizontally into pipes and faucets in places it is to be used. Christ's living water flows down from on high, a fountain that wells up in us and flows upward and outward horizontally to the world. It is the very nature and being of God flowing to us and through us....mercy, grace, humility, righteousness, self restraint, patience, all that is...