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.
Ministry, Not Just Methods
“When the church takes seriously its call to facilitate healing and life transformation as the Body of Christ, the world will be a different place…… one person at the time. We must reclaim a holistic view of what “abundant living” can be and help people achieve it." This is my call. I accept my responsibility to Be The Church, in all places, at all times, with all people, in all circumstances to the best of my understanding and ability based on my confidence in the call and God's promise to equip me for each task. I am not intended to do this task in isolation. I am part of a larger...
Healing Families: Breaking Generational Curses
Friday, January 20, 2023, January 20th, 7:13 a.m. after an emerging family crisis had become known to a young mother and me.) :Correspondence from Cathy Byrd to a Christian friend- "Good morning, I am humbled by your family's kind response to my request for respite care assistance with ministry to a family. This young mother has said she desires a better life for her children than she and her sibling knew. I told her that I believe that is a desire that mirrors the desire of God's heart and that if she is obedient to her own work of life recovery that God will honor her heart's...
Always There Going Before
From my journal on this day 2014... Most of the time the things one fears the most fail to materialize. And the ways in which one anticipates obstacles simply fail to appear. Thank God that He runs before us more than we can ever realize and clears the path for us so that we are able to continue on the path........And even when obstacles come, His grace is sufficient to see us over, through, or around them!
Abuse- First Responders
Have you considered that family and friends are "first responders" in relational abuse and violence generally? Healthcare providers and clergy are often the next line of contact to detect, educate, counsel or refer the abuser and the victim. By the time law enforcement is involved there are generally a number of other people who have known or suspected the problem. Relational abuse indicates a need for counseling for BOTH parties. How well prepared are we to respond? Abusers control their victims through secrecy, humiliation and shame, anger, isolation, threats and other means. Victims...
Trees and Fruit
I heard a sermon this week on the parable of the unfruitful fig tree. But for all my effort I cannot remember where or from whom I heard it. The message focused on the gardener's appeal to the master who had told the gardener to cut it down for having borne no fruit in three years. The gardener asked the master to give the tree one more year, or rather to give him, the gardener, one more year of tending it to produce fruit. "Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here!...
Going To Pot
From 1/15/2012: "A brief down day...truly Sabbath rest....no papers due, no books to be read, no tasks that must be done before Monday morning. (Although I really should be working in our yard! It's been so long since I did yard work, it's gone to pot .... oops, gone are the days when one could use that word innocently, I expect. Don't mean that literally 🙂 Although, did you read about the grandmother who had a lovely stand of marijuana in her back yard and when police showed up she claimed that she didn't know what it was, she was just growing it because it was a pretty plant?" When I sold...
Not Morbid, Just Fact
From 1/15/2015 "Because any day could be the last....... "But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer." 1 Peter 4:7 G. Campbell Morgan: "I never lay my head on the pillow without thinking that perhaps before I awake the final morning may have dawned. I never begin work without thinking that He may interrupt it to begin His own." (1863-1945, a British evangelist, preacher and Bible scholar, pastor of Westminster Chapel in London)" I've had this conversation about the fragile, ephemeral nature of each day twice this week. The older one gets,...
Writhing Death Throes
From 1/15/2020 I have called our current circumstances "living among the death throes of the enemy who thrashes about like a snake whose head has been separated from the body....." He's dead.... just hasn't realized it yet. "In his first coming Jesus inaugurated his kingdom in the world. He’s already ruling and reigning, he has defeated( but not yet destroyed) the god of this age, and he is seated on his throne at the right hand of the Father. Yet the resistance remains; the combat carries on. In his second coming he’ll consummate his kingdom, not simply defeating and dethroning every...
Acceptance.
I came across this prior post today and, as God would have it, as I was preparing for our monthly women's grief support gathering, I had come across a BBC podcast on why we need sadness. It covered 3 philosopher's view of the significance of sadness, one being Shopenhauer and his "cynical" view that all one can do is accept life as it comes... sad, happy, or otherwise. Here's the BBC "Teach Me A Lesson" podcast link snd my prior post below. Our grief group wound up being a lively discussion! https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0d5bpb2?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email ...
Wings Spread and Soaring
Also two years ago, from our oldest granddaughter... posted1/15/2021: Announcement from our oldest granddaughter, Catie Byrd Kelley who will soon be graduating from Mercer Law School. Woohoo! Shout out to you, Catie! So proud of you and all our grand girls! “I am so excited to share that I have accepted a post-graduation fellowship position at Alliance Defending Freedom as a First Year Lawyer Fellow that will begin in August! A HUGE shoutout to my supervisor-mentor-greatest boss ever Denise Mayo Harle for responding to my LinkedIn DM 2 years ago, letting me intern for her, and helping me...