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.
God Flips The Script
From 2016: God often "flips the script".....As Jacob's son Joseph told his jealous and deceitful brothers many years after their betrayal of him, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" Genesis 50:20a. No matter that one may find himself sold out, sidelined, ignored, forgotten, embattled or falsely accused, God has a plan and is allowing it for a purpose.... God's purpose may be larger than you and you may never know the fullness of it. You can trust God's goodness, God's sovereignty, and God's personal care and provision for you. Wait for the fulfillment of God's plan!...
God’s Questions
There was a series of devotionals on God's questions to some individuals in Scripture......to Adam and Eve, to Elijah, I think. But God posed questions to many in Scripture. Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Job, and others. My experience has been that God's questions are not a request for one's report of the obvious. Instead they are a challenge to look within ourselves, into the unexploredu private space of one's soul where He desires to live..... It will always signal housecleaning time. God will not live among the squalor of a hoarder's house. Our decades-old baggage needs to be cleared out,...
Facing Fears
The matter of suffering and our desire to somehow avoid it in life has been very present lately as my awareness has been heightened by my own and others' experiences.... I talked to someone who told me she'd had a dream in which her abuser, no longer in her life, had chased her. She ran in her dream, trying to hide, again and again. As he drew closer and closer, Jesus spoke to her and said, "Turn and face him." She turned and her abuser stopped on his tracks and could come no further. She said to me, "The Lord told me to face all of this." I told her there was a time in your life your...
Google’s Pay To Play Scam
I had a GREAT BIG "aha" moment today!!!! I have been receiving spam/phishing phone calls from Google for weeks regarding my "business listing" with Google needing an update to my "business listing.". I have not responded to them. Today I happened to answer a call and it was them again wanting to update my business listing. I asked, "What business listing?". Him; "Titus 2 Partnership, Inc. Is this Titus 2?" I told him who and what Titus 2 is. "Great," he says, "can we update your listing?" "Why?" I asked. Him: "So people who search Google can find you," he said. "Is updating my business...
Family, Church, Community, God and State
"Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger." To what is the Psalmist directing our attention in Psalm 8:2? Anyone with the capacity for compassion and interest in the preservation of families and interest in the future of humankind is moved by the cry of an infant or young child. A call from a helpless and defenseless child stirs an alarm in the bosom of one with a Parent's heart that brings her immediately to address the need of her child..... to feed, change, bathe, cradle in her arms, soothe his cry,...
Preparing For Lent In My Home Church
Pastor Craig Carter in his sermon on Sunday used a word I have also come to use in referring to our church campus and all church campuses...."outpost." As a new year has begun, it and the circumstances of recent weeks have aided in a review of our Titus 2 ministry, goals, and activities. Our current transitions with the ministry of Living Waters Bridge Ranch began almost a year ago as Laura Bosco and I undertook specific plans for partnership and began a new path for us and others. But actually, for both of us it was just a bend in the road we were both walking that opened new vistas on the...
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...