When Resentment Won’t Let Go: Yana Jenay Conner

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When Resentment Won’t Let Go: Yana Jenay Conner

Guest:Yana Jenay Conner

From the series:When Forgiveness Feels Impossible: Yana Conner (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:October 1, 2026

Yana (00:04):

I know for me, the game changer was the parable of the unforgiving servant. It kind of seems like he just goes and runs into somebody who owes him a lesser debt. There’s this phrase, a fellow servant that Jesus uses when he tells the parable. And for me, the Lord was like, “Hey, your dad is a sinner in need of grace. He is your fellow servant. He is living in the reality of a broken and fallen world right alongside you.”

Dave (00:39):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann (00:45):

And I’m Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Every single person that’s listening to this has dealt with this and needs to deal with it.

Dave (01:04):

What is this? I see this book and I’m like, “We’re going to talk about offense today.” I’m a quarterback. I love offense. Let’s talk about football and offense. Living Beyond Offense.

Ann (01:16):

How about offense?

(01:20):

Because you played football, it’s all you can think about.

Dave (01:22):

Everything comes back to football. Oh, I get it. Living Beyond Offense: Doing the Hard Work of Forgiveness God’s Way. Yana Connor is with us.

Ann (01:31):

Yes!

Dave (01:32):

Have you ever been introduced talking about football? I don’t think so.

Yana (01:34):

I haven’t.

Dave (01:35):

This is it?

Yana (01:35):

But I’m excited.

Dave (01:36):

But we’re not talking about offense.

Ann (01:38):

That’s why I said—that’s why I tried to weave us back into forgiveness.

Yana:

Tried to bring us back.

Dave (01:41):

Offense is fun to talk about. Offense is not fun. So define it. How would you define offense?

Yana (01:48):

I’ll actually quote one pastor, John Bevere, when he talks about there are two kinds of offended people. There are people who have been offended and then there are people who think that they have been offended. We will all suffer the reality of offense because we live in a broken and fallen world. But there are times when we are offended by something that someone did and it’s not necessarily sinful. And so in the book, I talk about how offense needs to find its definition in the commandments of Scripture. And so did this person actually sin against me or was it a failure to communicate? Is this a matter of sin or is this actually a matter of their humanity and their weakness? And so there are times where I’m in relationship with people and I’m offended because they’re not showing up in my life in the ways in which I want them to.

(02:40):

They’re not meeting my, be it reasonable or unreasonable expectations. And so then I walk away feeling offended and maybe come to them and confront them about how they’re not showing up in my life in the way that I want them to, but they haven’t actually done anything sinful.

Ann (02:56):

And that person can be like, “What’s your problem? What are you talking about?”

Dave (03:02):

This sounds like our marriage right here. This has happened many times, both ways.

Ann (03:06):

Every single person has dealt with that. But I like that distinction too.

Yana (03:11):

It may not even be sin.

Dave (03:12):

So would you agree with this statement? Because I’ve said this in a sermon. I should have pulled up my notes. I’m hoping I say exactly what I said, but I think I said it this way. Offense is normal, offended is a choice. Is that true?

Yana (03:25):

I think so. I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

Dave (03:28):

I mean, offense is going to happen.

Yana (03:29):

Offense is going to happen, but how you respond to it, sort of how you internalize what that person did, even if what they did was sinful, how you internalize it, that’s going to impact maybe the degree to which you are offended. And so I’m often asking the Lord to increase my capacity to be patient, to increase my capacity to be other centered, to be humble so that in the event that I am offended, I’m not so impacted by it that I’m not able to still obey Jesus’s command to be gracious, to be loving and to forgive. And so I do think we have a choice in that, but I do wonder if we can take that mantra or that principle to the extreme, to the point where we try to become undefendable and in doing so, then we negate the reality of the pain that’s caused.

(04:18):

And so it’s kind of like we just turn it off because we’re like, “Well, I’m not going to be offended by anybody. I can’t be touched.” In that sense, we’re probably closing ourselves off from real relationships.

Dave (04:30):

Now I did that.

Ann (04:31):

I was going to say, and it feels like denial in a way. And so you stuff it. Yeah. And Dave, you totally did that.

Dave (04:38):

Yeah, I did that. I mean, I’m going to ask you, if you write a book on offense, you must have had a situation in your life. I did, my dad, and divorce and alcohol and adultery and all when I was a little boy. But I walked into marriage and even Ann said, “I think you need to forgive your dad.” I’m like, “Oh, I’m good.” And it was all denial. I was hurt. I was offended. I carried it for 30 some years and I never really looked at it and said, “Okay, I need to take a journey.” And forgiveness for me was a journey. So what’s your story? I’m guessing there’s a story there.

Yana (05:10):

There is a story there. The first line in the book is my dad was my first teacher in forgiveness. And my biological father, he was an alcoholic. And when he was sober, he was present and he was a really, really great dad. And when he wasn’t sober, he was absent and I didn’t know why he wasn’t there. It was very, very confusing. And then I remember there was a stint where he was sober, but then he got a new family. So he got married, he had another child, and it was just really painful. I felt really, really replaced by this new woman and by this new child that he had. And then I remember in college coming to faith in Christ and knowing pretty quickly that one of the things I needed to do was forgive my dad.

Ann:

You knew it.

Yana:

I knew it. I was like, I grew up in church, so I kind of know what Christians are supposed to do, but it was an 11-year journey for me.

(06:07):

And I think the first part of it was me acknowledging the pain, acknowledging what his absence meant for me, how it was impacting my life, how it was created in me this bitterness and this distrust. And so I had to really sit with that for a while. But because I was a young Christian and also a zealous one, I was still trying to forgive. And so I was like, well, maybe forgiveness means I send him a Father’s Day card. I call him at Christmas. I remember I was in the hardware store trying to find a tool set to buy for him and all these things, but it was just me trying to perform forgiveness.

Dave (06:47):

How old were you then?

Yana (06:47):

I was in my 20s. I was in my early 20s. I was actually here in Orlando, Florida doing ministry here.

Ann (06:53):

But you’re trying to be this obedient young woman who’s following Jesus. You know that you’re supposed to forgive, so you’re working at it.

Yana (07:00):

I’m working at it. But it’s not coming together. And so then fast forward, I’m in seminary, I’m studying with a friend, and she starts asking me questions about my dad. I start to share about how I’m struggling to forgive. And she was like, “Well, it seems like you’ve never really had a conversation with your dad, that you’ve never really dealt with the pain that you felt.” And so she challenges me to go home and have a conversation with my dad.

Ann (07:27):

How did you feel about that?

Yana (07:28):

I was mad because we were just there to study. I was like, “I’m here to study. I’m not here to talk about my dad. I didn’t ask for your accountability. I didn’t ask for your discipleship.”

Dave (07:40):

You’re offended by her.

Yana (07:40):

Oh, I’m so offended by her. What’s crazy is she’s actually the reason why this book even exists. She was the one to reach out to me from Harvest House and was like, “Hey, let’s write a book together.” And so she’s a part of even my forgiveness story. But I go home and I am supposed to be with my dad. My dad cancels on me because he had a job come up and he had to take it. And my friend was like, “Well, did you reschedule?” And I was like, “Well, no, I didn’t reschedule. He didn’t reschedule. He didn’t ask if we could reschedule.” And no kidding, she was like, “Call your dad, reschedule.”

Dave (08:13):

I like this girl.

Yana (08:14):

I know, Lindsay.

Ann:

She’s a good friend.

Yana:

She’s a good friend. I go and I have the conversation with my dad, and for the first time I tell him how he hurt me.

Ann (08:23):

Okay. I want to hear the conversation. What did it sound like?

Yana (08:26):

It sounded like, well, I actually started with an apology because he was trying. He was in a season where he was sober and where he was trying to build a relationship with me. He was trying to get to know me. He was calling more. And I was just like, I think at that point I was in my 30s. I was like, “I don’t need you.” That’s just kind of where I was at. I have learned how to live without you, and I don’t actually need you in my life. And so I had really stiff armed all of his efforts to reconcile. And so I apologized to him for that and just said, “Hey, that’s not in step with the ways of Jesus. That’s not the kind of person I want to be or how I want to treat you, so please forgive me for that.” But then I began to share the pain of him just not being there and he’s weeping.

Ann (09:13):

As you’re telling him.

Yana (09:14):

He’s literally weeping. And then he—

Ann (09:17):

For you, what was that like for you? Were you surprised?

Yana (09:21):

I was surprised because he was a very jovial kind of guy. He never acknowledged his in and out in my life, his abandoned me. He’d never confessed those things or even seemed to be bothered by those things. It was like when he would see me, it would just be kind of like that wasn’t a big deal. And so to have him there, to see him weeping. And my dad, he’s massive. He’s a big guy. He’s a mechanic. He’s bald head, just goatee. And so just to see him weep like that was really overwhelming and brought about my own tears. But then he began to express that he was sorry and that he regrets a lot of the decisions that he had made in his life. And so it helped me to see his humanity, to see his pain. And he said something to the effect like, “I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life.” And it was just like I don’t know what those things are.

Ann (10:16):

You don’t even know him.

Yana (10:18):

But he said, “I’ve asked God to forgive me.” And I was like, “Wait, wait a second.” And so there we were just sharing that moment together. And then we hugged it out. He gave me a big kiss on my cheek, and it was really sweet. And then it was like, okay, now how do we do this?

Ann (10:40):

How do you go on from there?

Yana (10:40):

How do we move forward relationally? And it was awkward and it was weird and it was frustrating and it was hard, but I got my dad back. And for me, it was a gift that we were in a position to write a different kind of ending to our story. But it was really my friend who helped get me there. It was sermons that helped get me there. It was wrestling with Kay Arthur studies on forgiveness that helped get me there. But it was a really, really long journey. And I think most of it was because I didn’t actually know what forgiveness was. I’d heard a lot of really good sermons about it. I would be convicted, I would be inspired, but I didn’t know how to actually do it. What does it look like? What does it feel like? And that’s what I’m really trying to answer in this book.

(11:29):

It’s not just why do we forgive, but actually how do we do it and how do we have assurance that we’ve obeyed Jesus’s command to forgive?

Dave (11:43):

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Ann (11:51):

I think you’re right.

Dave (11:52):

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Ann (12:02):

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Dave (12:12):

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Ann (12:41):

Join us.

For your friend to say, “Uh-uh, you need to call your dad now. You went to see him. Now you need to call him and make sure you get…” But look at, I watch your face as you’re sharing that story. I wonder what it would’ve felt like for you had you never done that. Who would you be had you never had that conversation, even spiritually?

Yana (13:05):

Yeah. The sad part of the story is that my dad unexpectedly died two months after we had that conversation.

Dave (13:13):

Two months.

Yana (13:13):

His appendix ruptured and then he had a pulmonary embolism, and I think his body had just been through way, way too much and he wasn’t able to sustain that surgery. I will say that was a very, very confusing time for me because it was like, “God, why would you give me my dad back and then you take him away?” And because I’m grieving, that’s all I can see. I can’t see the man, God, thank you that we were able to have that conversation before he passed. If I hadn’t listened to my friend, I would’ve completely missed that opportunity to have that conversation with my dad.

Dave (13:50):

So you’re walking around with a whole different regret.

Yana (13:53):

Oh yeah.

Dave (13:54):

Guilt maybe. I mean, you were sad and confused, but at least you had something a lot of people never—

Ann (14:01):

Never.

Dave (14:02):

—never do.

Yana (14:03):

Yeah. And so I’m really grateful to that friend. I’m really grateful that I was able to have that conversation with my dad before he passed and that we were able to write a different ending to our story. My biggest regret is that I didn’t go fishing with him. And maybe one of my biggest regrets is that I wasn’t able to get to a place of forgiving him sooner. And while I know your spiritual journey is what it is and you can only be where you are, and I find great comfort in what Paul says in Philippians, you can only live up to what you’ve obtained. There’s still this semblance of regret like, “Man, I wish I would’ve been able to get there sooner so that one, I would’ve been able to get to know my dad more and also so that he could have shared fishing with me, which was something that he really loved.

Ann (14:51):

It’s so sad, but—

Dave (14:53):

I mean, I’m sitting here thinking, if I would’ve taken that journey, you were in your 20s. Yeah, I didn’t take it till my 30s. And my friend told me to do it too, her. She was the one that—

Ann (15:07):

I could see the effects of not forgiving—

Dave (15:10):

Oh I was walking around with bitterness and anger that was coming out in my home and with my sons that I couldn’t see. I didn’t know the cord was connected right there. And there are other things, but that was the big one. And so I had to go on a journey. And I sort of thought, I mean, I don’t know if you had this thought, but I’m preaching and I’m preaching on forgiveness at different times through the years. And every time I wrote a sermon on forgiveness, I was like, “I haven’t done this yet.” But I’d sort of bury it and go lead the congregation and say, “You need to do this,” realizing I’m not sure I’ve done this. And then I realized I got to do this. And I actually thought, “Okay, I’ll do it next weekend.” I thought it’d be a quick thing.

(15:57):

Ephesians 4:32, forgive as you’ve been forgiven. I know this stuff. I’ve taught it. I know the Word of God. I underestimated. Whoa, for me, it was about a five-year journey. It’s interesting when you said your journey, I picked up a book by Lewis Smedes. I don’t know if you ever saw that one, but he’s with the Lord now, but it was written, boy, in the ’60s probably, called Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve. And he walks you through a four-step process, which you literally went through that I had to. He says you’ve got to acknowledge the hurt. I turned them into H’s. I don’t know if he had it that way, but I’m a preacher. So that was the first thing is I kept denying that I was hurt. I was like, no, I really was. And I’m not blaming my dad, but I am.

Ann (16:41):

You said the same thing you had to go through.

Dave (16:43):

When you were saying, I’m like, there’s the H. The second one was, I think I call it hate, but he just said there’s a displeasure that you feel toward that person that you got to acknowledge and you call it hate or whatever, but it’s like—and Ann said to me, “Do you realize when your dad calls, you don’t really talk to him?” You like, “Yeah. Okay, bye.”

Ann (17:02):

Why are you shaking your head about that, Yana?

Yana (17:04):

Oh no that’s totally me.

Ann (17:05):

Really?

Yana (17:06):

Yeah, totally me.

Dave (17:07):

I mean, when you’re hurt, you carry that.

Ann:

You disengage?

Dave:

Yeah.

Yana (17:09):

Oh yeah. I was a master at getting off the phone. And so I think we would talk about the weather, we would talk about my car, and then he would try to maybe get to something personal. I don’t know how I would do it, but I recently did it too when I was on the phone with somebody else that I was walking through something difficult with and I was like, “Man, that’s just in there.” Just this ability to get off the phone with ease. But every time he would call, I would roll my eyes, I would huff and puff. And it was like, it’s just a phone call, but my anger would immediately rise just at seeing his name on the phone. Yeah.

Dave (17:50):

And then you have to go through this healing journey. That’s the third step. And for me, again, it was years.

Yana (17:55):

It takes a while.

Dave (17:57):

Yeah, it does.

Yana (17:57):

And I do think there’s this reality that you do have to heal a little bit in order to be in a place to forgive so that some of that anger gets released, some of that pain, that hurt, and maybe even you’re able to see it a little bit differently. I know for me, the game changer was the parable of the unforgiving servant. There’s this phrase, a fellow servant that Jesus uses when he tells the parable of how this servant, he has this massive debt and then he’s forgiven of this massive debt. And then he goes and finds. It kind of seems like he just goes and runs into somebody who owes him a lesser debt, and it refers to this person as his fellow servant. And for me, the Lord was like, “Hey, your dad lives in a broken and fallen world too. Your dad is a sinner in need of grace.

(18:46):

He is your fellow servant. He is living in the reality of a broken and fallen world right alongside you.” And that just kind of helped open up some compassion within my heart.

Ann:

Was that new for you to have those thoughts as the Word just kind of God used the Holy Spirit through His Word.

Yana (19:05):

Yeah. I only saw my dad through the worst things he ever did. I forgot about the days that he showed up. I forgot about the day that he was the first person at the hospital after I was in a car wreck. I forgot about how when he was sober and I had a big sleepover at his house. All I saw were the days that he didn’t show up. And so I just went all bad on him, and I couldn’t see the duality of the good and the bad, and I couldn’t see his humanity. And so I think that’s a part of the process too that really helps you to open up.

Ann (19:35):

I had parents that were married 70 years, and they had some great things about them and also not so great, which is every single family. There’s some great things, but there’s some broken things too. They weren’t believers. I remember in my 20s going through a phase where all I saw was the brokenness. All I saw was, “Well, that messed me up. Well, that’s why I’m like this,” because I’m seeing my insecurities in my 20s and I’m thinking, “Where did this come from?” I’m pointing to my parents like, “Oh, it’s you guys. You guys did this to me.” I remember talking about this with a group of women. I said, “I feel like my 20s…” It’s like when you take bacon grease and you pour it into let’s say a glass, and at first, it’s all mixed up. So I felt like that’s growing up years is all mixed up.

(20:20):

There’s good, there’s bad. And then in my 20s, it’s like the fat rose to the top that I couldn’t see underneath that white fat, the solid. I couldn’t see the good underneath it.

Yana (20:31):

That’s so good.

Ann (20:32):

And then as you get older, and for me it was walking with God, it was seeing their imperfections, of course. And look at me. I’m right there with you and now having kids, they got a lot of fat at the top of that jar that they have to kind of remember like, oh, there were some good things too. So I think that that’s really normal and healthy, but I think that’s happening more today. I’m hearing of a lot of kids that have no relationship anymore with their parents. Have you heard of that?

Yana (21:05):

Yeah, I have. I have.

Ann (21:07):

And you probably get it.

Yana (21:09):

I get it and I don’t get it. I understand that people have been through really horrific things with their parents and if your parent was abusive, be it verbally, physically, spiritually, and they’re still unrepentant, I think that is warranted.

Ann (21:25):

Right; for boundaries.

Yana (21:26):

Yeah, for boundaries and those kinds of things. And also to hold them accountable for what they did. But I think when it’s like your parent annoys you or maybe they have just unhealth in them that they’re still working out of, and it’s not necessarily abusive, it just takes a little bit more effort to communicate. I’m not saying that those aren’t real frustrations. I’m just asking the question of, is that cause for sort of going no contact with your parents?

Ann (21:58):

I’m with you.

Yana (21:59):

Me and my mom, we’ve been on a journey. If I was in my 20s in this year, maybe I would probably do that. But it wouldn’t have been because she was a bad mom. It just would have been because our relationship was just really difficult. I look now 20 years later, and me and my mom have a really great relationship. I think that’s really the thing. I don’t know if we’re giving—as children, you just expect your parents to be perfect, but I don’t know if we give our parents space to fail and space to grow. But if I had just cut the relationship off at 20, I wouldn’t have been able to see that. And so I know that these are really complex things. No one comes to a decision to go no contact with their parent with great ease, but I am asking the question, are your decisions in step with the ways of Jesus?

(22:47):

Are you acknowledging your parents’ humanity? Are you giving your parents space to fail and grow? And are you removing yourself from the relationship because it’s difficult? My generation, we’re not that resilient. When it comes to communicating, when it comes to navigating our emotional world, we’re just not as resilient. I understand that that is us trying to not repeat the sort of failures of our parents or previous generations, and we want to be more self-aware and want to have more healthier relationships, but sometimes that stuff requires work, and it means persevering through some things. Those are the things that bring me concern, but I know that it’s a really complex situation. It’s one that always brings up grief for me when someone says that they’re not in a relationship with their parent anymore or their kid disowned them. It’s so, so painful.

Ann (23:45):

But I love that you said that you’ve had to work through with both your mom and your dad; and I think a lot of us do, but I love that you’ve put the work in.

Okay, this has been a great start.

Dave (24:02):

Oh man, we’re talking about some heavy stuff, but so real and practical.

Ann (24:07):

Forgiveness. Again, the book is called Living Beyond Offense by Yana Conner.

Dave (24:11):

And you can get it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes and guess what? We’re not done. Yana’s going to be back with us tomorrow, so we’ll see you then.

Ann (24:19):

We want to hear from you. You can leave us a voice message with your questions, concerns, praise reports, or whatever. All you have to do is go to speakpipe.com/FamilyLifeToday. Again, that’s speakpipe.com/FamilyLifeToday or get the link in the show notes.

Dave (24:45):

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