Resentment as the Plot of Your Life?

Can you tell your story from beginning to the present time without a plot that includes resentments that continue to be a focus and predictor of what is ahead? I think we all have our times of getting angry about someone hurting us physica...lly or emotionally. Anger is a strong and protective emotion that is our human response to being attacked. Anger is the energy that sends us running away from our attacker or towards them to do battle. It is the energy of anger that accomplishes both tasks of self-defense. Resentment is the re-living of the event over and over again until it becomes so much a part of our story and identity that we have trouble living life beyond the shadow of such resentments. In fact, we begin to see future events defined in terms of our resentments in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For some of us, we can scarcely talk about the events of a single day without reporting how this person or that one infringed on our personal space and thereby injured us. Life without past resentments and current reincarnations of those resentments seems nearly unthinkable. To live this way is like having a disease that does not cause physical symptoms, but slowly eats away at the very core of our lives. St. Paul once wrote, "who will rescue me from this body of death?" Cain lived out his resentment towards his brother, Abel and towards God and his entire life was lived according to the code of proactive protective revenge. The real story of redeeming love is how each of us has been rescued from a life of resentments that define and destroy us. Perhaps you have a story of how God's redeeming love rescued you. What symptoms tipped you off that something was radically wrong? Who helped you see your life differently? What events shattered your identity of resentment?