I’m so happy that it’s the Sabbath! God looked through the ages and realized how many millions of people would need Sabbath rest to spend time with Him. Have a blessed Sabbath!
Grammarly says… “you’re too wordy!”
Someone from Grammarly contacted me about a book review I had written and asked if I would be willing to consider reviewing the grammar program. Last year, Carrie reviewed Grammarly and I was curious to find out how it would rate my writing. I was advised to try out the program with a post that had not yet been proofread. When I wrote the Next Door Savior review, I submitted my rough draft to Grammarly to see what it thought of my grammar.
Grammarly gave me a score of 84 out of 100. Four issues were found.
1 – Use of articles. It didn’t like that I said “that book would make me cry.”
2 – Pronoun agreement. “I can rest assured that none of my feelings are foreign to Him.”
3 – Comparing two or more things. “Why is this so encouraging?” Grammarly said that my comparison is incomplete because of the word “so.”
4 – Subject and verb agreement.
The subject of your sentence, “none of my feelings”, is a singular or uncountable noun, and does not agree with the present tense verb in your sentence, “are”. Consider changing your subject to a plural noun, or writing your verb in third person singular (he/she/it).
Apparently just one of my sentences contained half of the errors found in the entire book review!
I corrected two of the errors. First, I replaced “that book” with “the book.” Then, I took the word “so” out of the comparison sentence.
When I rechecked my work, Grammarly gave me a score of 91 out of 100. It again pointed out the two errors that I didn’t correct. However, I’m not sure that the errors are actually errors.
My original sentence – “I can rest assured that none of my feelings are foreign to Him.”
My pronouns are correct and the subject and verb agree. It is proper to say both “none are…” and “feelings are…”. So I’m not sure why Grammarly was unhappy with my subject / verb agreement.
As an experiment, I replaced “Him” with “Jesus” and tried it again. Grammarly says… “0 issues found. Score: 100 of 100.”
Overall, I think Grammarly is a fun resource. I agreed with two of the issues it found in my writing, as I do tend to be rather verbose. I actually blame my middle school teachers for this. “Cassandra, you need to write a 500 word paper! Your word count matters!” I thought it was ridiculous that word count was more important than content and learned to pad my writing. My favorite professor in college was the one who told us, “content is more important than the length of your paper. If you can accurately address your topic in one page, write a one page paper. If you need four pages, write a four page paper. Just don’t make me read 20 page papers.”
If you struggle with grammar, it would be beneficial to utilize Grammarly’s user-friendly program. If you’re like me, someone who enjoys learning and writing, you might only need the program for a short period of time. Grammarly provided me with a quick refresher on basic grammar. If you don’t enjoy grammar and rely on writing as part of your career, I can see how an ongoing subscription would be a lifesaver.
Many thanks to Grammarly for letting me try their program in exchange for an Amazon gift card. The opinions are entirely my own!
Next Door Savior – A Book Review
I’ve been reading Max Lucado’s books for a long time. During my freshman year of college, I had a dog-eared copy of one of his books on the life of Christ. I don’t remember the title of the book, but I remember how powerful it was. The book would make me cry. Lucado has a way of portraying God that makes you realize just how great God really is.
Next Door Savior is just as good as the dog-eared book from college. It made me cry. It raised my awareness, once again, of how much God loves us. Each chapter in this book covers an aspect of Jesus’ life and character and talks about just how accessible God is.
One of my favorite passages:
Jesus has been there. He experienced “all the pain, all the testing” (Heb. 2:18 MSG). Jesus was angry enough to purge the temple, hungry enough to eat raw grain, distraught enough to weep in public, fun loving enough to be called a drunkard, winsome enough to attract kids, weary enough to sleep in a storm-bounced boat, poor enough to sleep on dirt and borrow a coin for a sermon illustration, radical enough to get kicked out of town, responsible enough to care for his mother, tempted enough to know the smell of Satan, and fearful enough to sweat blood.
But why? Why would heaven’s finest Son endure earth’s toughest pain? So you would know that “He is able . . . to run to the cry of . . . those who are being tempted and tested and tried” (Heb. 2:18 AMP) (Next Door Savior, page 24).
Why is this book encouraging? Because Jesus understands! However I feel, no matter what is going on in my life, Jesus gets it. He’s been there. I can rest assured that none of my feelings are foreign to Jesus. Because He understands me, He can help me. Jesus can carry me through life because He experienced it Himself.
If you haven’t read any of Lucado’s books, I’d encourage you to pick up any of them and read through it. It will encourage you in your walk with God. I think this book would make a great devotional by reading a chapter each morning and pondering the message throughout the day.
Thank you to Booksneeze for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. All thoughts are my own!
Wrapping up loose ends
We are still waiting for the contracts to be returned from Taiwan so that our dossier can be notarized and authenticated. Because we’re still waiting, I haven’t felt an urgent need to print the last couple pages necessary for the dossier or assemble the family photographs.
Today I decided it was time. I don’t want to get caught unawares when the contracts arrive only to scramble to print the last few pieces of documentation. So today I took the last two photos that were needed, our dining room/kitchen and the back side of our house. I assembled the eight photos requested and printed them. I also printed the Washington state adoption laws. Now our dossier is ready for notarization and authentication as soon as those contracts arrive!
I hope the judge doesn’t look too closely at our “dining room.” We’ve been using it as an office since we moved in! Before our daughter comes home, we plan to buy a kitchen table and chairs so that we can eat dinner together properly.
And, strangely enough, I’ve never stepped out the back door to take a look at the back of our house! We don’t have a backyard per se, so there is no reason for me to go out the back door.
I can’t wait until we’ve saved up all of the adoption fees so that we can start furnishing our daughter’s room! It looks rather bare now but we’re excited to start furnishing it later this spring.
We did receive a very minor piece of news today! The National Visa Center has kindly informed us that our I-171H has now been forwarded to the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), which is located in Taipei, Taiwan. The AIT is also the “visa-issuing post where the adoption interview will take place.” How exciting!
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Adoption Pending
It totally made my day when I logged into my agency’s website and found that they just updated their waiting child list.
*Post edited – Because Z has refused adoption, I have removed her pictures to protect her privacy.
Status – Adoption Pending
That’s my girl!
Pilgrimage – A Book Review
Pilgrimage by Lynne Austin
When it showed up in the list of books available for review, I jumped on it. A nonfiction book by one of my favorite authors? I couldn’t wait to start reading it.
Pilgrimage is subtitled: My Journey to a Deeper Faith in the Land Where Jesus Walked. I was excited to see what Ms. Austin learned while spending time in the same places Jesus lived.
The book started off a bit slow but quickly became more interesting. Austin shares a very personal experience of how God spoke to her through her Bible reading, providing her with a text that was so applicable to her current situation that it seemed as if God Himself had written it in a letter addressed to her. When trying to determine if a trip to Israel was within God’s will for her life, she read the following text. “Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell of them to the next generation. For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end” (Psalm 48, quoted on page 80).
When I read of this life experience, I felt reassured by God. When we were trying to determine if adoption is God’s plan for us, God placed a text in front of me that spoke just as clearly as in Austin’s prayer for direction. It was awe-inspiring to watch God work.
The book taught me a few facts that I did not know. For instance, in the chapter titled Holy Week, Austin talks about the different feasts and celebrations. She writes, “the Feast of Firstfruits is always celebrated on a Sunday, regardless of which day Passover and Unleavened Bread happen to fall. Since Passover is decided by the phases of the moon, the three feasts rarely occur on three consecutive days. But in God’s perfect timing, in the year that Christ was crucified, they did. Such precision helps me trust His timing in my own life” (page 150). God’s timing is always amazing!
In the chapter titled Galilee, Austin writes about the Great Commission. She writes, “we are supposed to go out into the world, not wait for the world to come to us, even if God has to turn our comfortable lives upside down to get us to do it. I’m told that in the original Greek language, the wording of Jesus’ Great Commission reads: “As you are going into the world… make disciples.” Jesus assumes that we will be going; His orders are to make disciples along the way” (pages 183-184). I don’t know Greek, so I cannot verify her interpretation, but it’s an interesting thought and one that I am still pondering.
There was one more section that really resonated with me, the chapter called Sabbath Rest. I am very honest about the fact that I am a Sabbath keeper. It’s a big part of my religious beliefs and I find the Sabbath incredibly important. While in Israel, Austin also had a realization of the importance of the Sabbath. She writes:
On the Sabbath we remember to rest on God, trusting Him for all of our practical needs such as our daily bread and for strength in our trials. The Sabbath helps us to remember to trust in God, trusting Him for our salvation, knowing that none of the work we do will ever gain us entrance into heaven. And it helps us to remember to rest for God, because when we organize our lives and our work around a special day to honor Him, He is glorified. Can you imagine what a witness we would be to a restless, exhausted world if Christians set apart the Sabbath as holy, making it different from our ordinary days?
Amen!
I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to read and review this book. Many thanks to Bethany House for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion. All thoughts are my own.
An additional disclaimer – There are Amazon affiliate links in this post. Any money that I earn when you shop through my links goes toward buying things we need to prepare for our daughter’s arrival. Thanks!
Knitting for Thailand!
Well, I’m not actually knitting for Thailand. I finished a knit project for a specific young lady in Thailand whom I have gotten to know through letters over the past year. I hope she likes what I’ve knit her.
Getting ready to start
Bruno watching over my knitting efforts
Blocking in progress
Bruno inspecting my blocking
Finished hat and scarf
Lace detail
I will be mailing these off tomorrow, along with a couple of pictures of me knitting them. I’m afraid to say that I’m too shy about being photographed and have not yet sent any pictures of myself to my sponsored kids. I do send them photos of other things, just not of me. But my Thai girl asked for a photo in her last letter so I’m sending her one. I guess it’s only fair, as I look forward to her upcoming photo update!
The sponsorship trip is in just a couple of weeks. I am so, so, so grateful to the sponsor who offered to deliver my gift. If it wasn’t for her, I’d never be able to send anything more than paper. And while studies have shown that the sponsored kids are most encouraged by the words we write, it’s a blessing to be allowed to send something I made and prayed over especially for her.
New Year’s resolutions
I’ve always been a big fan of New Years because I love writing resolutions. I love the feeling of starting a new year with new goals and aspirations. Over the past year, however, I’ve discovered that I need something more than New Year resolutions. While they are inspirational, if I don’t make a detailed plan of how I am going to accomplish each resolution, I fail. I forget. I get derailed.
This year I’m going to do something different. I’m not making any New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I’m going to focus on just two things.
Bring my daughter home.
Finish all of the half completed projects around the house before we travel to Taiwan.
That’s it.
I get excited about projects, work on them for awhile, and then neglect them. As a result, I have at least a half dozen projects in various states of completion. A homemaker’s schedule. Several knitting projects. Two quilts. A recipe book.
There are probably a few other things as well. Over the next week, I’m going to walk around my house and poke into all of the bags and notebooks to find out what has been started but not completed. When our daughter comes home, I probably won’t have time for personal projects. We will be spending all of our time and energy helping her learn what it’s like to live in a family, teaching her English, and determining her education level. I’m sure we’ll be busy.
Maybe, in a way, I do have a New Year’s resolution – to go to Taiwan without any loose ends plaguing me. As I have no idea when we’re traveling, I don’t know how much time I have to complete everything. It will be at least six months but hopefully less than a year. I’d better get busy!
Approved!!
It has been a long process for one approval.
10/8 – Mailed off our I-600A application.
10/11 – USCIS receives our application.
10/16 – We are logged into the system.
11/1 – We receive an RFE (request for further evidence).
11/5 – FBI fingerprinting!
11/14 – Mail off RFE paperwork.
12/17 – Discover Jeff’s birth year is incorrect on the home study.
12/18 – Home study is corrected.
12/19 – APPROVAL!! (We don’t know it yet)
12/27 – We receive verbal confirmation of approval.
12/30 – We receive approval in the mail.
Whew!
Today is a monumental day. First, we received the approval we need to progress with the dossier. And today marks exactly six months since we decided to adopt our girl. We can’t wait to officially become her mama and baba!
*Post edited – Because Z has refused adoption, I have removed her pictures to protect her privacy.