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.
Happier Holidays
November 12, 2013 Tonight the wind is blowing through the front bedroom addition wall which does not yet have sheetrock and insulation and the false wall with plastic sheeting is crackling in the wind. I'm feeling a little like Lisa Douglas (think: "Green Acres" ) who lived in a perpetual remodel being done by two "contractors" with questionable capabilities. Even Lisa, though, never suffered the indignity of having her clothing drawers riffled through, closets poked through, and personal sentimental jewelry gone through and pilfered. I am pretty disgusted and sooooo ready for this...
Growing Strong in the Word
I love how our daily lessons in the Word with the Wake -Up Call morning devotional from seedbed.com point to and buld on one another. I didn't hear writer JD Walt reference seedbed's graphic representation of the church's awakening calendar that reveals multiple rhythmic cycles or "seasons" in each 12 month timeframe when God re-presents renewed opportunities again and again for this "V-device" pattern mentioned in Friday's devotional to challenge us or simply for further reflection, meditation, surrender, and refining in this process of molding the true "self" through the days and seasons...
God Speaks
From a personal FB post 11/11/21.. If you are not regularly and consistently reading and applying yourself to the study of God's Word by which he reveals himself and his will to us, you will not hear him speak to you. If you ARE doing that then you will hear him speak to you through his creation, through his Spirit, through his people, through circumstances, through his Word, and even at times through his very voice in your heart and mind and when he does it will ALWAYS align with his WORD and you will know it is him. You won't have to ask him to speak to you. He will be speaking to you day...
Defining “Leader”
I had received a call from a respected leader asking if I was available to serve on a planning team. I replied I'd be happy to and was told that my name was to be put in nomination for the team. I told the individual that I harbor no illusions about anyone's view of my suitability for any leadership role anywhere as I seem to have a reputation for poking hornets' nests. And asking questions others skirt around. LOL! .........or simply don't see as relevant. 🙃 The individual replied: "🤣 That’s what I call leadership, Cathy. You are able to have the difficult conversations and still love...
Rescue Pets and the Goodness of God
https://seedbed.com/on-designer-dogs-and-rescue-pets-2/ JD Walt's reflection today in our morning Wake Up Call st seedbed.com on rescue pets led me to remembering the many rescue pets of our family over nearly seven decades of my life ..... and especially those that were part of our children's lives with us.... so many joys and blessings to us all. A youth asked our pastor if there would be pets in heaven. He, whose family had a couple of beloved companion animals themselves, asked the youth if his pets gave him joy and love. The youth eagerly said, "Yes!". Our pastor said that because...
11/1/69 – 11/2/69. Janet Lynn Boyd
From November 6, 2015.... "Today on my way home from a trip with a student, we made a detour through my family's hometown, Clayton, AL. I stopped at the cemetery next door to the United Methodist Church there to visit my Daddy's grave. The flowers looked fine. While there I also checked on the grave of a baby sister who died in 1969 within 24 hours after a premature birth. My sister Carol Andrews and I had a conversation earlier this week after she sent me a post about "loving my sister"...(meaning ME!). It resulted in a brief conversation between us about the baby sister who'd died, Janet...
Resilience In Resistance, Rejection, and Revelation
There was a time in my life, a day, a specific moment when I felt the rejecting and dismissive spirit from some who presumed to judge me without even knowing me. It was truly an experience that felt like an emotional ambush and in my mind I asked God, "What is happening here? This isn't at all what I had been led to expect." It seemed to me that a cloud of spiritual conflict was in the room from the moment I sat down. As soon as I asked, the Lord responded with this Word, "This isn't about you. Watch and wait." I watched and waited through one disastrous encounter after another as the war...
Parenting For Generations To Come
This past week one of our topics in the parenting/re-parenting class for women at Titus 2 was the instruction to teach our children to "suffer well" if we want them to live effectively in a defective world, they must learn this skill and adopt this attitude. Suffering has many forms. It is endemic in life. Jesus told us that we will encounter suffering in life and He encouraged us to allow Him to bear it with us. Jesus did not ask that His followers be taken out of the broken world, but that they be protected from evil and be sanctified wholly-Spirit, soul, and body- in the process of...
The Impact of Mature Love’s Desire
What occurred to me as I reflected on the Holy Spirit story (link below) in The Wake Up Call of Bear and Caryl Mills' witness today was the words of 1 Corinthians 13:13. "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.👍 But the greatest of these is love." What came to mind was the way that even the tiniest seed of faith in Christ can give hope for a future. Hope stirred in us by faith can be lived quietly, privately, expectantly, or even noisily and still not lead to germination that yields stems and shoots, leaves and roots, buds and fruit. One may be aware enough and somewhat attuned to...
Faithfulness v. Perseverance
There is a difference between perseverance and faithfulness. Perseverance implies the presence of resistance and the need for focus and determination of will that can overcome obstacles and resistance. Perseverance is what I would call an "instrumental value", the means by which one achieves a goal. It is part of one's equipping to accomplish what God has purposed. Faithfulness, on the other hand, is a gift of Spirit-filled living, the outcome that reveals the priority and focus of one's perseverance of faith and hope. Faithfulness is revealed in perseverance in even small tasks of obedience...