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.
Testing Experiences
"We put so much stock in our own felt experience of the grace of God that we lose touch with the actual fact of the grace of God. It is not our feelings that save us. It is the facts and our faith therein. It is the ephemeral up-and-down nature of our feelings that tends to keep us in the land of vertigo." Jd Walt in today's seedbed.com Wake Up Call For Christians, it seems to me that personal felt experience alone is often questionable or at least should be questioned! Personal religious experiences have been held at a suspecting arm's length and tested against long term impact on the...
Hungering and Thirsting: How To Read The Bible
My friend, Pat Sabiston, is a published author. We talk about books and the activities that go into and arise from such an endeavor. But often we talk about one particular book, The Bible. We both find God's Word wonderfully inviting and revealing and we enjoy sharing what God shows us there and as we read our supplemental devotionals and observe other things in our day, those things are illuminated by the Bible's principles, their topics often dovetailing in ways that make us marvel at God's faithfulness, creativity, and intimacy in our lives. I think this is one of the reasons God would...
Encouraging Other Future Helpers
From May 25,2019 I had such a sweet phone conversation yesterday with a young lady getting ready to start an accelerated BSN program in another state. She was referred to me by a friend who had worked with our program. This young lady has been volunteering with a domestic violence program and wants to work in trauma-informed care. She is exploring God's call on her life and our former volunteer felt that she could benefit from learning more about what we do at Titus 2 in offering healing to women in life-limiting circumstances. She particularly wanted to know how to enter into group...
Learning To Read The Bible
Seen on Twitter: What’s your favorite “how to read the Bible” book? Several folks were weighing in with various authors’/theologians’ names or titles. My first thought: the Bible itself.... accompanied by prayer for Holy Spirit illumination and conversation with godly friends. Best guidance I’ve had. Throw in a little reliable commentary on ancient cultural traditions, geopolitical history, language and translation peculiarities, etc, to help with orientation to time and place. An author friend who also teaches a Bible class commented, "Why would one need to know how to read the Bible? Our...
From Bible Study to Hungering and Thirsting
From 5/21/2018.... I had a sweet conversation with someone recently who shared with me that she had realized that all these years she'd been reading the Bible in a very simple, literal sense only and missing some of its meaning and richness and personal application. She said she has begun to recognize that there is spiritual vision and spiritual hearing and spiritual understanding that goes above and beyond reading words at face value. With tears in her eyes she said, "I think I have begun to receive spiritual eyes and ears! And reading the Bible is becoming so much more personal." We talked...
Water Pistols, Flies, and Termites
From 5/21/2019 Someone told me today that he envisioned me as marching on the gates of hell with a water pistol. I'd had another describe my efforts in spiritual battle as being more like a fly on the rump of a stallion. LOL! I guess others see my efforts in spiritual warfare as pretty pathetically paltry and having little power or impact. I had even described my own spiritual work as guerilla warfare and myself as a subterranean termite in the war against evil......having to tunnel underneath sometimes to undermine and attack...…..which made the person laugh to whom I was talking. I don't...
Morning Moon Shine
From a year ago..continuing to adapt and appreciate my townhome ... (CBB 5/17/2022 ) "Full moon's light shining in my window at 4:20 am...... a reminder of God's goodness. It has no light of its own but reflects that of the greater light. Lying here, with morning hymns playing in my mind...... I used to enjoy beautiful views of the moon over the lake.. The moon is just as beautiful from any point where one happens to be taking it in..."
Megalodon and Great White Sharks
I saw a picture this week of what was reported to be the upper and lower jaws and teeth of megalodon compared to that of a much smaller contemporary great white shark and was reminded of some reflecting on the mystery of megalodon's existence and extinction from a few years ago: "Just pondering..... if megaladon was the largest shark species to ever live and went extinct over 3 million years ago, since no complete intact skeleton has ever been found, how do we know it was not just a great white shark that lived at a time when the oceans were rich and not highly commercially fished and...
On “Spiritual Experiences”
(A spiritual) "experience isn't a possession to be coddled and stored, it's an encounter with the indwelling Spirit that thrusts us further and deeper into the world........John Wesley often asked his friends this question: "Is Christ real to you? How? Tell me a story." Wesley paid attention to the encounters of early Methodists, eager to hear the strange things the Spirit was doing in their hearts. Though he handled these experiences with care, always testing them with Scripture, he was also always ready to be surprised by the ways that the Spirit was blowing scriptural holiness across the...
Why We Accept So Few in Titus 2
You know, I've learned so much in these 15 years of working with women saying they want recovery. That is NOT the same as wanting to transform one's life. If one can't clearly state that she's had enough of the old way and knows that she's had enough of the merry go round of misery, then I'm not really going to be able to help. I'm not dishing out bandaids. Healing is the work we help facilitate and it is not fast and it is not easy. It's boot camp and our volunteers are the training officers. It's spring training and our team members are the coaches. Put on the big girl pants and the armor...