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.
High Places: Fearfully and Wonderfully
It seems that this is the second time in this Lent series that Dan Wilt, author of Jesus in the Wild, has referenced a personal experience of being on a high place, a tempting prominence where the view is breathtaking, and the heady (and frightening) feeling it can invoke. As I think of those two emotions co-existing side-by- side in such a place I am reminded of Psalm 139:14 NIV - "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well." I have meditate on Psalm 139;14 before and not seen the connection and purpose before. "Fearfully...
Remembered
So blessed to receive this photo from our youngest granddaughter who spotted this beautiful male cardinal outside the library window at her university today. Said it made her think of me....❤️ what a sweet way to be remembered.... from 3/12/22
Death and Taxes
From 3/12/22.... Getting a letter from this source is always a bit angst-provoking. To receive two in the same day is doubly angst- provoking. In 2019 , with all the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, we simply weren't able to get things together by April 15th, 2020.... so our CPA requested an extension in April of 2020 until November 2020....and we all know what happened in March 2020- every "non-essential" function everywhere shut down.... The request for the extension on the 2019 tax return had not appeared in the system of IRS by June 2021. We had already filed 2019 return in...
Doing Discipleship, Fostering Agency
I am discipling a middle-age woman with no childhood experience of religious practice but a growing realization that the only way she is going to gain power over her addiction of 25+ years is through Christ. (She has been in 7 recovery programs and multiple detoxes in that time.)She has had one relative model Christian faith in her life and she has read a good bit of the Bible but she's just not "got it". She says she has burned all her bridges. She was one class short of completing a masters that hasn't been finished because of a DUI a few years ago that ended her driving privilege. I have...
Be Prepared When You Say, “Use Me, Lord.”
Discerning the enemy's ways and rejecting them can take a long time and hard experience. Dan Wilt's lingering reflections on the opening verses of Luke 4 in the Wake Up Call at seedbed.com have given me time to reflect on some of those experiences in my life. And, as we will see later in Luke's gospel, the satan does not give up even when he strikes out in an inning. He simply waits for an "opportune time," wearing us down, and shifting his strategy. God may allow the satan's testing of us, but God knows what His redemptive will is in the long run and He encourages us to hold fast to the...
Neutralizing Evil or Good?
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. Luke 4:1–2 (NIV) Dan Wilt writes in today's Wake Up Call devotional (at seedbed.com), " There is a spiritual power of evil that both exists and has a purpose—to get you to either forfeit or extinguish the precious gift of life your Creator has given you." This spiritual evil, the satan, knows what we know... that our bodies are merely temporary. He will destroy them if he...
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...