Thought for today:

We come to DA to find answers to our debts.  We look for a quick fix.   They tell us to keep track of our expenses and earnings.  Not the fix we were hoping for, but OK, we’ll go along with the idea, because we’ve exhausted the alternatives.

We find that the answer to our suffering is not external to us.  We need to transform ourselves, not circumstances.   Along the way, we seek to clear the wreckage of the past.

DA Step 8

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

A member shares:

“I owed money to family, friends, banks, credit card companies, and bosses.  I missed payments and would avoid them all.

“In DA, they told me I had to change the person who came into the rooms of DA, into a person who no longer needed to debt.

“I tracked my spending and got my money on track.  I made a list of my debts and became willing to contact the creditors I had avoided.

“When I had a workable Spending Plan I was able to make arrangements to pay down my debts.  I became willing to have awkward conversation with family creditors.  I was willing to acknowledge that I had avoided them.

“I’m grateful at the outcome.  It was positive and freeing to stop hiding.”

Making peace

Making peace with others takes time.  We have  to first be spiritually fit.  Rejection is possible. So we check our motives, seek guidance, and have faith that love will find a way.

When we set out to make the list, many of us start with the list we made in our Fourth Step, for we had uncovered much wreckage there.

We seek to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.  Working the Eight Step means getting clarity about all our relationships – with people and institutions.  It means preparing ourselves to let love guide our way into healing.

Ask:

“Have I been avoiding the truth?  Am I willing to be honest with the people I have harmed?”

Meditation for today:

What we see in the world around us is not the whole story.  We only see what we pay attention to.  In the stillness of a moment, there are myriad patterns and connections around us that go unnoticed.

If we are self-centered, we only see our own suffering and needs.  We don’t see the bigger picture.

It is freeing to expand that view to include the feelings, dreams and hopes of others as well as ourselves.  Although we are not caretakers for others, we are fellow humans and each of us needs mercy and love.

Affirmation for today:

“Just for this day, I will face my life with courage.  With the help of DA and my Higher Power, I have what I need to live through whatever this day brings.” *

* From DA’s “Just For This Day” bookmark – literature P-129.

Recommended reading:  

See our Fourth Step Template which helps us to take a fearless moral inventory.

Some members, with the help of their Pressure Relief Group, take a moratorium from debt payments in order to get their spending under control.  See this Debt Moratorium sample letter to creditors for one example.

For a detailed analysis of all the Twelve Steps, read Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

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