Resentment can be a powerful force in our lives. At its core, resentment represents a breakdown in trust in our Heavenly Father and His plan for us. Jesus Christ assured us that as unlikely as it is for a father to give to their child a stone when they ask for bread or a serpent when they ask for a fish, it is even more impossible for our Heavenly Father to do the same for us. Every experience that He sends to us is for our ultimate good, even, and perhaps especially, the ones that from our limited point of view seem irredeemably terrible. It is true that sometimes our Father's gifts seem like punishments. Actually, sometimes they are punishments, but that does not mean they are not also gifts. Heavenly Father is much more committed to our eternal progress and salvation than we are so He will not hesitate to give us the gift of punishment if that is what the situation calls for. If we receive all of His gifts with the Spirit of gratitude and the patience to wait until His purposes are revealed, then we will realize that even what appeared to be the stoniest of stones turned out to be bread after all. However, if we resent our Father's meddling in our lives, if we have returned the gift unopened to our Father, if we have impatiently and ungratefully re-sent it to Him, then we are setting ourselves up for a bitter and ultimately futile battle. At the beginning of the first Harry Potter book, a magical school makes increasingly elaborate attempts to deliver acceptance letters to young Harry Potter. His resentful family who seeks to deny him of this gift, makes more and more desperate efforts to prevent the delivery of these letters. They board up the cracks in the doors and the windows, travel to a hotel, rent a rowboat and paddle out to a tiny island in the middle of a storm, but the letters keep following them. Our Heavenly Father will not accept His gifts being re-sent to Him. He will keep sending His gifts to us even when we have tried our best to close ourselves off to Him or run as far away from Him as we possibly can. It doesn't work because He is everywhere, including whatever place we think to run to, including inside of our hearts that we try to close off in order to keep Him out. It is much better for us if we will trust the Lord enough to carry around what seem to us like stones and serpents for as long as we need to until we are ready to finally receive them as bread and fish.
