Life’s simple things are best described as the moment makers. They don’t cost anything, and you can’t plan for them.

It is like when a small child raises their arms for you to take them and hugs you tight. When you walk out of your house and the grass looks greener and the sky more beautiful and the breath you take in is sweeter. It is like when you are driving with no music, no emails, no texts, and you are just at peace and realize that it is a rare moment.

The things that hinder and impede these simple moments are strife, anxiety, anger, sin in your life, confusion, envy, etc. You get the picture. These are the things that kill these simple moments; these emotions keep you from experiencing God’s simple grace and God’s simple gifts that he wants you to experience.

A quick test to see if you have any of these emotions operating in your life is if you have a conversation with yourself in the morning before the day starts. You are standing at the mirror and saying things that you should have said in the real conversation yesterday or you are telling someone off about how they treated you. Have you ever noticed that you always win the arguments when it’s just you? Ha.

I am sure no one reading this blog post has ever had this happen to them. Oh, you too? So, we have all been there!

You will never get to the place in life where you no longer feel hurt or slighted or angry. It happens to all of us from time to time. If it happens to you every morning, then you may want to look deeper and fix the problem through forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of those incredible simple acts that you and only you control. It has such great impact on your life and your joy. Withholding forgiveness only hurts you and your own health and your peace.

Years ago, I had an uncle who wanted to trade cars with me. We decide to trade, and I took my car to meet him with my title in hand. When I got there, my uncle told me he would get me the title to his car he was trading once he paid off the loan. I trusted him and said sure that would be fine.

The next week, he took the car I traded and the title I gave him and he sold the car and kept the money. He left me with the car that he still had a loan on. I had to give him back the car he had the loan on because it was no good to me and then I had to go out and get another car that I could own because I now didn’t have a car.

This all happened at a time when we were so broke and were struggling to make ends meet. To say that I was angry would be an understatement. I literally wanted to go to his house and take the value of my car out on him. Had I done that, I wouldn’t be writing this blog today.

A few days later after the incident, my sister was at our house, and I walked her out to the car and it was one of those God moments that neither she nor I expected. She pointed her finger at me and said, “you need to forgive this man or it is going to ruin your life.” At that moment, it was like God was speaking through her to verbally tell me what to do. I almost fell to my knees in the driveway because the words impacted me so strongly.

I went back in house and wrote my uncle a letter where I basically told him I forgive him, he owes me nothing, and his debt to me is forgiven.

Well, his life from that point has been everything but good. God took my life and has blessed me immensely.

In this situation, I came very close to altering my life over strife that would have had an incalculable impact on my wife and children. Rather, I choose to heed the words from God through my sister.

I suppose sometimes you just have to forgive others and choose in the forgiveness act to move forward with your own life.

So in closing, when life’s simple things come your way and you see the beauty of that moment, never ever take it for granted. It is those moments that are the simple things, but also the life-changing things. KT