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The Steps, Traditions, And Tools: Keys To A Spiritual Awakening I am a compulsive debtor from Salt Lake City, Utah, and through the grace of God and the program of Debtors Anonymous and the 12 Steps I have not incurred any new unsecured debt in over four and a half years. I’m going to share my story of what it was like before DA, what my journey in DA has been like, and what my life is like today. Before DA I was working seven days a week in two low-paying jobs and I was driving an old beater car that had lots of weird and embarassing quirks. I was living in a property that my parents owned, and paying my parents sub-market rent. I was just struggling financially. I had more going out than was coming in every month, and I didn’t know what to do about it. When I first walked into the rooms of Debtors Anonymous, I heard the Tools, and the first Tool that really jumped out at me was record maintenance, just to carry around a notebook and write down everything that went in and everything that went out, even if I found a penny lying on the ground. And so I started doing that and I also heard to stop incurring any new unsecured debt. My experience that I consider my “sobriety date” in DA was....I went to a gas station, and it was only a few days after my first DA meeting, and I pulled out my credit card to put gas in my car like I normally would, and right as I was about to put it in the little slot, I stopped and I thought, “You know, there’s money in the checking account, so I will use my debit card for this transaction.” I made a commitment to myself then that I would use my debit card for all of my purchases until there was no more money in the checking account. A week or two later, I hadn’t incurred any new unsecured debt, and I felt like I had an accomplishment and wanted to hold on to that. Sometimes it was really scary as far as I would look at what was coming in and what was going out and I would think, “There is no way that I cannot incur new debt.” But something would always happen. Sometimes it would be that I’d get a gift from somebody, even 20 bucks, or that I would have an opportunity to do some work for somebody, like mind their pets while they went out of town. Little things like that came along, and sometimes I ended up eating the food that was in the back of my cupboard because I didn’t have the money to go to the grocery store. But I never went hungry and my Higher Power did take care of my needs. Along with all of this, within a few weeks of joining DA my car broke down. It was on its last legs, and there was nothing I could do to repair it; I had to replace it. I feel like my Higher Power put an angel in my life. It was a family member who was willing to give me a loan for the car. It was a secured debt. That family member also was willing to do a consolidation loan for some of my credit cards that I was paying 30 percent interest on. These loans were legitimate loans; we drew up the paperwork and agreed on an interest percentage, and it was a fair percentage to both me and this family member. I didn’t consolidate all of my debt with that family member because I was really ashamed and embarassed about how much debt I had. There was one credit card that was maxed out that I didn’t tell that family member about. I started making payments toward the car and the consolidation loan and the credit card that I hadn’t consolidated. Within a couple weeks of buying the car I actually got fired from my job. This was all in my first few weeks of DA! They had read something in the meetings that said once you had six weeks worth of record maintenance you could ask for your first Pressure Relief Group. So I had started my record maintenance and I already had the PRG scheduled; it was scheduled for a Wednesday, and I got fired on a Tuesday. So within 24 hours of getting fired I had my first PRG. I feel that was really a God thing, that it was already scheduled. I walked into that PRG just in tears, saying, “We can look at my expenses, but my income is gone.” We looked at how much I had in the bank at that time and determined that I wouldn’t have to debt for something like three weeks. You’ll remember I was working at two low-paying jobs, and I only got fired from my full-time job, not my part-time job, so I did have a little bit of income coming in through that. My Pressure Relief Group helped me look at what type of job and what type of income would really meet my needs, and they encouraged me to seek jobs that would have a specified wage, and to not take a job that was lower than that wage, or at least to really weigh the consequences and check in with somebody if I was tempted to take a job that was lower than that wage. I actually did end up finding a job really, really quickly. When I went for interviews, I used a prayer that just said, “My goal and my desire is inner peace. I don’t know what will bring this to me. I leave the results of this situation in your hands. Thy will be done.” I ended up finding a job that was more than I had ever made as far as my hourly wage. I started utilizing skills that I had that were going unused. I had always felt like I was doing the world a favor by working in industries that were low paying, but that were kind of caring about the world, or service industries. I had skills in computers and other things that were going unused, and so I was able to transition into a new line of work that more utilized the skills that could pay me more. With that I also started considering going back to school. All I had at the time was my high school diploma; I had never done any college. My Pressure Relief Group encouraged me a month or two later to look into college. I did pursue that dream. I worked full time but I started going to school in the evenings. Even though it’s been several years and I’m still not to my associates’ degree, I’m about two-thirds of the way there, and I’m really proud. I feel like an accomplishment that I’ve hung in there that long. It’s getting close enough that it feels like it’s really going to happen. I’m excited about getting my associates’ degree and do intend to continue on beyond that. A big piece of my program was working the Steps with a sponsor. DA was not my first 12-Step program, but it was the first time that I got all the way through all 12 Steps with a sponsor. My sponsor helped me a lot, particularly with the Steps. She had some structure that was very good for me. I did 30 questions in 30 days, where I did a reading either out of the AA Big Book or the AA 12&12, and then answered questions about it. That walked me through Steps 1, 2, and 3 in a 30-day period. What I learned in Step 1--I did write a history and learn about my own personal patterns with money and debt, and that was very eye opening and immensely helpful in seeing how powerless I was, and that my life was definitely unmanageable. Then with Step 2; when I first came into 12-Step programs my attitude was that I didn’t know whether God existed, but I didn’t care. It was an attitude of, “If there is a God, I certainly don’t need Him in my life.” Through the 12 Steps, I have been able to connect with a Higher Power of my own understanding. It’s very different from what I was taught as a child in the religion that my parents raised me in. But today I believe that there is a power or an entity out there that has my highest and best good in mind, and the highest and best good of everyone involved; that is consciously aware of me and willing to help me. This entity is a source of love and healing and never uses fear, obligation, guilt, or any of those negative things to motivate me. The experience of coming to find a Power Greater than Myself that was willing and able to help me stop debting was just huge. So Step 2 was very powerful for me. Step 3 is an ongoing thing. I have done several Step 3s over the years in DA, and I have to keep turning my life and my will over to the care of this Power Greater than Myself that I choose to call God. With Step 4, I found out a lot about myself. I thought that I was a victim, and I found out that I was often a volunteer, not a victim, and that I did things to injure others. When others injured me, it was often in retaliation for what I had done to injure them. In Step 5, I shared with my sponsor things that I would never tell another human being. They were just things that I had so much shame and so much guilt about that I didn’t want anybody to know. Sharing that with a loving and understanding and compassionate sponsor who knew what Step 5 was all about was really a healing thing for me. I’ve heard in these rooms that we’re as sick as our secrets, and that honesty is the key to being able to recover. Being able to be honest about those things was a piece of the beginning of the healing process. With Step 6, where I became entirely ready to let God remove my defects of character, that one was very easy for me, particularly my first time working through the Steps. I saw how much wreckage was in that Step 4, and how much pain I had caused other people, and I did not want to continue living my life that way. I did not want to continue going around hurting other people through my selfishness. So Step 6 was very easy and I moved on to Step 7 very quickly. “Humbly asking God to remove shortcomings or my character defects.” How I did that was through a prayer, through a really sincere prayer. There’s a prayer in the AA Big Book that I like and I do use frequently that says,”Take away from me any defect of character that is not of usefulness to you and my fellows.” I love that prayer. With my Step 7 prayer I didn’t have the book in front of me, I just did it from the heart, just doing something that was sincere. Step 8 was making a list of everybody I had harmed, and I, for the most part, already had that list from Step 4. What I did have to do, my sponsor had a worksheet for me. I had to list the person’s name, what I had done to hurt them, and then possible amends. There were three types of amends. There was a direct amends, where I would actually contact them, preferably face to face and tell them that I was wrong. There was an indirect amends, where I could do something like, if I had stolen from a grocery store and the store was out of business I could send money to a charity on behalf of that grocery store. A living amends was to change my behavior, and to the best of my ability commit to not repeating that behavior with anyone else in the future. I had to come up with what type of amends would be appropriate for each person on this Eighth Step worksheet, and sometimes it was a combination. I often did a combination of one, two, or all three of those types of amends. Then I sat down with that worksheet and reviewed it with my sponsor before going to try and implement what was going on there. My Step 9s were all very individual and all very powerful, and very healing. I didn’t always get the responses I was hoping for or expecting from the other people, but it was about my being able to forgive myself and my being able to find healing from it. Step 10 is “Continued to take inventory and when we’re wrong promptly admitted it.” I try to practice this in my life still. Ideally it would be daily, but I have a little worksheet and it’s usually two or three times a week. I just fill it out before I go to bed, and it just asks, “How am I doing?” It’s a worksheet I created for myself. I had used Step 10 worksheets of other people for a little while, and found that I knew what my problem areas were, and so I just created this little worksheet, and it’s kind of grown as I grow. I add things to it, or I modify the things that are on it, and it works well for me. Step 11 has to do with meditation and asking what God’s will for me is, and asking for the power to carry that out, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for me. I take that pretty literally. I try not to take my Higher Power “grocery list” prayers, where I have my list of demands or preferences. Meditation is something that I have to do in small doses; I’m not one of those people who can sit down and meditate for 30 minutes! If I can meditate for three or five minutes that is really impressive for me! So, meditation is a work in progress. I have taken a few meditation classes. I’m learning what this whole meditation thing is, and how to apply it in my life. Step 12 says that we have had a spiritual awakening as the result of working the 12 Steps, and it’s also about carrying the message to other compulsive debtors. I do feel like my life today is so different from the life that I had before DA, and my relationship with money is so different. I feel like if I compare my life today, and my thoughts and attitudes about money today to my life before, in hindsight I can say that I have had a spiritual experience. It wasn’t a burning bush type of event where I was just struck one day, but I can see the growth and the progress, and have to acknowledge I couldn’t have done it through my own will power, without the Fellowship of Debtors Anonymous, my sponsor, and the 12 Steps and God. I am very passionate about carrying the message of the 12 Steps to other compulsive debtors. I do a lot of service. I sit on other peoples’ PRGs, I sponsor other DA members, and I do service at the group level with leading a meeting, or, previously, being a group treasurer. I’ve done service at the Intergroup level and actually been the Intergroup representative who had the opportunity to go to two World Service Conferences on behalf of my Intergroup, and that was just a fabulous experience. My city hosted a World Service Conference, and I was the Host Committee chair, working with the hotel, doing everything it took in preparation for the Conference. About a year ago I applied to be a Trustee for Debtors Anonymous on the General Service Board. After a few moments of thinking that it wouldn’t happen, in my Higher Power’s time it did, and I have been working on the GSB as a Trustee for seven or eight months now. Service is truly its own reward, at whatever level. Service keeps me coming back. It allows me an opportunity to feel like I belong. It is a key piece of my program. In Debtors Anonymous we have something called the 12 Traditions, and another big piece of my recovery has been trying to apply the 12 Traditions in my personal life and my personal relationships. A few that have really jumped out at me: Tradition 1 talks about unity. I try to be aware of unity in my relationships at work,with my family, with my friends and significant other. Tradition 2 talks about the only authority being a loving God whose will is expressed through the group conscience. I can even apply that to things like the political process, believing that if I show up and vote for the leaders of my community and country, that I’m participating in a group conscience. I have to trust that the group conscience is what God’s will is at that time, even when I don’t always agree with the end result. Another Tradition that has helped me is Tradition 4, which talks about autonomy. For me, autonomy means the right to speak and make decisions for myself. It’s balanced by the fact that each person has the right to be autonomous, but needs to be aware of the impact that their thoughts and actions and behaviors are going to have on the other people they have to interact with in their life. Tradition 7, trying to be fully self supporting, has been important to me on several levels--a financial level, a spiritual level, an emotional level. I feel like I used to be so emotionally needy, and I sought validation from other human beings because I was fearful and convinced I was lower than dirt and didn’t have any worth or value as an individual. Other people had to reassure me. Today I can be emotionally self supporting. I also strive to be financially self supporting, and DA has helped me do that. Along with being emotionally self supporting, the concept of anonymity that’s talked about in Traditions 11 and 12 has been an equalizer. It means I’m equal to every other human being sitting in a meeting, as well as other human beings out in the world. We all have different talents and aptitudes and tasks that we perform, but any of those things that I’m good at don’t make me better than other people, or things that other people are good at don’t make them better than me. We are all human beings, and that’s a wonderful and glorious club to belong to. I appreciate everything DA has given me, and I appreciate the opportunities I have to give back to the Fellowship of Debtors Anonymous. Anonymous |