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.
No False Hope
Our task in life recovery is multifaceted- spiritual education and growth, character formation, sobriety, life skills education, financial accountability, social recovery, career skill training and development, family reconciliation, community resource identification and access, emotional literacy, establishing realistic expectations of oneself, others, and human institutions, cultivating a servant's heart toward others, and so much more. A court reunification of a young lady and her child is proof that attending to those things yields dividends that extend far beyond the student...
Two Sisters’ Responses and Transformations
Two Sisters' Responses and Transformations (Luke 10:32-48, John 12:2-3) Watching Mary: When awareness gives rise to attentiveness, it fosters attunement, rooting a deep attachment, yielding flowering affection breeding mutual abiding amid Holy Spirit aroma and worshipful abandonment. Watching Martha: An invitation accepted begins excited activity distracting attention, giving way to anxiety, observed by guest's awareness, who corrects with tender agape that leads to adjustment of attachment and abiding, freeing servant's abandonment to hospitality and appreciation. (with gratitude to...
A Problem With The UMC
from October 27, 2017- posts about UMC It is the time of year when many churches set their budgets for the following year and conduct their stewardship campaigns. Among Methodist friends I am hearing more and more people (of the ones who have chosen to remain in local UMC congregations) expressing their concern over continued news reports : same sex marriages and homosexual clergy ordination in The UMC, over-representation in General Conference of small liberal conferences, under-representation of conferences in more traditional and orthodox areas like Africa and elsewhere, liberal seminary...
Clearing and Planting New Fields
I had written about my experience of having God direct my attention to a beautiful fresh plowed field and hearing Him say, "This is you!" http://disciplerofself.com/spiritual-life/plowed-fields/ Many of us have been journeying in an online FB community foreign g a devotional by JD Walt of seedbed.com on Fruit of the Spirit. I shared my "field" reflection with the group and I've been considering further the beautiful agricultural references in God's Word...... JD wrote today about his boyhood experience on a family farm helping "chunk" a field cleared of trees to create a new field...
Functional Religion Arising From Transactional Ethic
"Functional religion is the essence of idolatry whereby people try to get God in their debt. Not only is this false religion but it generates all manner of false gods leading to the flourishing of hypocrisy and the harming of people. ". JD Walt, Wake-Up Call Devotional 10/25/22 This is a potent observation! As I have worked in addiction recovery, I have seen all sorts of idolatries sustained through transactional giving and receiving for the purpose of one's own needs or desires, most often hidden by habitual unexamined use and reliance, tradition, poorly informed reason, or rebellion...
When The Light Comes
When the Light comes.... Years ago I read a book by Terry Kay, The Year The Lights Came On. It was about the WPA electrification of the rural south and the impact that year of many changes had on young boy's life. Some years, some events, some seasons have that kind of epiphanies impact on us. Sometimes it takes the darkness of disaster to comprehend the true source of our Light. Four years ago today, almost two weeks after Hurricane Michael on 10/9/2018, lights were observed in the night across the lake from our home and it stirred hope that we might have power restored soon. Five days...
Cultivating Patience
It is interesting how often the topic of patience comes up in life... In 2002, Emmaus community friends of ours with whom Bill and I each shared respective reunion group participation gave us a 1966 book entitled "Living Patiently: A Devotional Study of the Book of Job" by J. Allen Blair (1913-2007, author, pastor, radio evangelist) Twenty years later I was still tending that fruit in the field. On 10/22/2021 I had written: "Recently I wrote about patience… today I realized I was working on the same thing 4 years ago! Some things don’t change…. “Some days you're flying and some days you're...
Music Pleasures
from 10/21/2012..... Sunday mornings are my favorite time of the week. For me singing is worship. I love being in choir. I think God must have had me in mind when He decided Heaven would have a choir! I want to sing in the tenor, alto, and soprano sections there.....just moving around and having a wonderful time harmonizing with all the saints from all the nations! The Lord's Prayer is worship. The Doxology and Gloria Patri are worship. The congregational hymns are worship. The pastoral prayer is worship. Are you getting this? I love meeting the Lord in the traditional elements of the...
Shaken and Aftershocks
From 10/21/2015: "What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience." C. S. Lewis Yesiree, now isn't that the truth? Sometimes an experience challenges the philosophy one has, based on prior experience, so radically that it rattles a foundational pillar and causes a major shift that requires one to adjust and regain equilibrium and confident footing before the lesson in the experience itself can be fully appreciated. As long as one's Cornerstone is well laid, however, no amount of tectonic shifting due to an outlier experience can bring down the structure...
Books Touch Hearts….
From 10/21/2017: When Hurricane Michael ripped a hole in the upstairs west side wall our classroom library at Titus 2, we lost some of our books. Some have been replaced. Others were shared with folks who lost everything in their homes. As we continue our residential transition to Living Waters Bridge Ranch we are going to have to reduce our collection as our classroom will be one third to one quarter the size of our current space. "An individual doing community service hours with us at Titus 2 was helping me organize our classroom e library shelves. She came across a book on the shelf,...