David W. Ballard: Professional Writer specializing in Web content writing, copywriting, feature writing, fiction writing, and poetry.

Peace of Mind

Exhale the stress.
Stop the mental chess.

Drop your defenses.
Be your senses.
Feel the moment.
Open your mind.

Stay there.
God’s aware
You feel stressed.
Just do your best.

The kids can wait.
Your boss can hate,
But none can take
Your peace of mind.

Morrisville Chamber of Commerce

Articles I penned for the Morrisville Chamber of Commerce:

Green Industry
Duke Medical Plaza Morrisville, United Way of the Greater Triangle
Senior Living

Prayer of Saint Francis

A great poem, to know and say, as a means of taking the focus off ourselves in search of a higher calling, one we receive when we ask to give.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

(Poem attributed to St. Francis of Assisi)

Children

A loud cry into the world
And out ventures every baby boy and girl.
They are cradled in arms, seats, and beds
Then, they crawl on the floor instead.
They take a step then fall, step then fall,
Till they walk, and we all
Wonder: where the time has gone.
Still, the pondering continues much past one.
We tell them rhymes unlike the last,
And they learn mimicry much too fast
For censorship or thought.
“Was I store-bought?”
They might ask,
Or say something else to make us laugh.
They take each step before our eyes,
And soon we say goodbye
To them when they go off to school—
First: elementary, middle, then high.
Dropping them off at college feels like the last time
We will ever see them again and begin to cry.
Still, the final step at the wedding aisle
Is the hardest goodbye.
We return home to our empty nest,
And wonder if we did our best.
We turn to our spouse and say “yes,”
If we shared Christ: that is the final test.

Timeless Treatment

This is a great article written almost 30 years ago.

I think the “experts” are lagging behind though, just look at the Psalms, written mostly by King David almost 3,000 years ago. For example, Psalm 2 describes emotional hardship by someone, in this case King David, and provides a rough outline for how to overcome distress: Detail the problem, problematic perspective, action, and finally new perspective.

However, as the Time magazine article states, not all instances of emotional distress are relieved using poetry. In some cases, other forms of medical treatment are better suited to stabilize emotional distress.

North Carolina Power

A summary on North Carolina power and its sources

North Carolina Power . . . Empowering Communities

By Lamplight

Raising the lamp high, Truth shines on shapes in the dark.
Some of the things of the night lay hidden
In the shadows, like insecticidal sin,
Roaching away from God’s arresting arc
Of light.

Still, the lamp reaches higher and higher—
Sin scurrying away from the beams of light—
Shining brighter and brighter.
We pause at losing the cover of night,
Our rights.

Why?

Poetic Means

Below is a PowerPoint presentation on using poetry as a means to process difficult experiences. Hope you enjoy! Please let me know if this mechanism works for you.

Poetic Means

Love You

You are worthless,
The liar tells.
You will fail today,
He almost yells.
You are weak,
He whispers when you are faint
You should not speak,
He says when you’ve been wronged.
You have no friends,
He says when you feel alone.
He attacks all the daylong
Till all your will is gone.
Give in to your favorite sin,
He says,
No one will know,
So hide away at home
And go it alone.

When you are in that place, stripped bare,
And no one is there,
And you think no one cares,
That life isn’t fair,
Know you are where
You were meant to be.
God works best in defeat
As you rest on His mercy seat.
Be strong and courageous.
Be bold in Him, bold in love.
Be joyfully contagious.
Be mindful of
God within and without,
And never doubt
He loves you.
Now tell yourself:
“I love you, ________.”