A firm foundation: fixing our eyes on the immovable

Photo by Martin Joos on Unsplash.

There is only one secure foundation…no matter what storms are raging. ~ Charles Stanley

While house/cat sitting for my daughter and her boyfriend, I ventured on a solo walk close to dark. Unfortunately…[read more]

Regaining your balance

[Image credit: ponsuwan]

It can be a rude awakening when the rug is suddenly pulled out from under you.  It can shatter that vulnerable part of you, the side of you who lives transparently and trusts fully.  You may be left with shattered hopes and dreams, as well as feelings of stupidity, betrayal, confusion or worse.  Perhaps the hardest thing isn’t the brokenness, but that you’re forced to take a good hard look at yourself.  And you may conduct an honest assessment of your entire belief system and discover you don’t like what you see.  There may be skeletons lurking under the surface called selfishness or greed.  However, instead of dealing with them, you might be tempted to stuff them into the back of your closet and ignore them.  Of course, overlooking these “ickies” will not make them go away.  But once you address them, you can right yourself and begin to regain your balance.

How do you regain your balance when the rug is pulled out from under you?

Grammar lesson #6: neither/nor, either/or

[Image credit: Stuart Miles]

After my last grammar lesson (who or whom), I heard there was still a lot of confusion.  Hopefully, either this lesson is a lot easier, or at least it makes more sense.  Because neither you nor I need any more confusion added to our lives.  Can you figure it out from these two sentences?  First, either cannot be paired with nor and neither cannot be paired with or.  Secondly, when using neither in a sentence, you are saying that the first and second objects are not behaving in a particular way.  In other words, the nouns/pronouns are in agreement with each other.  Whereas, either indicates that one noun/pronoun is doing one thing, while the other noun/pronoun is doing another.  In the case of my above examples: either/or is the correct combination to use in the first sentence because I hope this grammar lesson is one of two things: easier, or that it makes more sense.  In the second sentence, I believe both of us don’t need more confusion added to our lives, so neither is the right adjective to pair with nor.  Get it?

Do either you or someone you know mistake these grammar combinations?  Hopefully neither you nor anyone else find them confusing.