I am a city-girl, which probably makes me the least qualified person to talk about bulldozers. But I am going to anyway because the image just won’t leave me. I was sipping a nonfat latte in the new downtown Starbucks last week, in my city-girl dress and matching boots (see, completely unqualified). I was catching up with a friend, and without a thought in my head I told him, “I feel like a bulldozer.”

We are taught that compassion means paying attention to the people around us, reaching out to someone less fortunate or less able. Showing compassion means seeing someone else’s need and doing something yourself to meet it.

“If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments.”

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

As a kid I always chose "truth" in the game of "Truth or Dare" because I was too chicken to take most dares and too square to have any juicy "truth" to share anyway.

But today I am making an exception.  I am accepting a "dare." I am taking Jeff Goins' challenge to s.l..o...w.......d..o....w.....n.

It' a 5-Day "dare" he calls the Slow Down Challenge.

Utterly exhausted at the end of May, I decided to conduct a secret little experiment in the month of June to simplify. You can read more about it by clicking the link to this guest post.

The thought behind it was to begin slowing my life down by letting this one little word “simplify” roll around in my heart and mind all month.

Life is good. Even when it’s hard, life is good.

For me, this always comes in the form of gratitude.

*big exhale*

God is a Planner too. His words, not mine:

’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord…

Well, it’s a good thing, because I don’t.

This was NOT at all what I had planned.

And that’s a really big deal because well, I’m a planner.  I plan everything…from the next 10 minutes to the next 10 years.  I’ve got it all mapped out for myself.  Or, at least I did.