“This goes out to the heaviest hearts, to everyone who has hit their limit…it’s not over yet, keep on fighting out of the dark into the light!” – for King and Country
$97 thousand and some change in, this is not a bet or a card game…it was how far down the financial hole I had driven myself. I was so good at lying and hiding that no one knew how bad my financial deep ocean was. I was drowning in bills, credit card debt, bank(s) overdraft charges and money owed to friends. All to feed an addiction that was slowly killing me!
The financial deep ocean was my bottom…a dark lonely bottom. Have you ever been in deep water? When you are on the surface you have the sensation of floating but when you go deep, it’s dark and heavy, add in being chained to the bottom of the ocean floor with 5 seconds of oxygen every 5 min…that was how my bottom felt. I had to fight out of that dark into the light.
My financial amends was not an overnight, boom…you got sober money problems over! I WISH!!! My financial ocean has run me up to this very day over 6 years later. My financial debt is one of my living amends to my husband. He had no idea how much money I had spent, lost, thrown away and owed he was in total disbelief when I told him. I look back now and slightly chuckle because his face was priceless BUT it was in no way funny. I had ruined all our life goals for our future together. My husband was saving very diligently for a home, children, vacations and new vehicles…he was so good at saving. All that money had to go towards my debt and that barely scratched the surface.
When I started working with a sponsor she told me I needed to own my financial debt and take care of that myself as I was the one who did the damage. I told my husband I wanted to take over the debt and work hard, do what I needed to do to slowly pay off the debt. I didn’t want him to help me but he refused to let me do it all alone. He said for better or for worse I married you and we do things together. To this day I still feel like I never deserved his grace and patience he gave me at that time.
Fast forward to about a month ago I had hit a bottom, not drugs or alcohol… emotional. I was a mess underneath and I was too scared to show it…I was not fine and I was not okay and I had a moment of break and someone saw it. Someone who was in recovery, who knew we all hit these times, they aren’t easy but we hit them. He gave me a hug and I felt for a few min the hurt melt away. My emotional break was a 6 year pile-up of “I’ve got this, the debt will someday go away”. There were so many things happening I couldn’t hold that “I’ve got this” mentality anymore, I broke. I stopped trusting God and started taking on the financial deep ocean and let it drag me down…drop the rock, right?
Weeks later I got a call, my knees buckled, I could barely speak and I thought I might puke. Mind you up to this point I was going 60 miles a minute, feeling like I was falling behind, I was falling apart….then this call to tell me they were giving me money as gift of thankfulness. I was so emotionally moved I could barely express my gratitude I thought I was going to pass out.
That night I got on my knees to pray out of gratitude that even though I had taken my will back God was watching out for me. Pray and pray hard the connectivity of prayer is so healing. I am still in disbelief and still cry from the gift given to me, so incredibly humbled. Stay humble, pray, stay connected to everyone in the program, keep going to meetings…in the end things always fall together just the way they are supposed to!
– Written by a Volunteer for Myrecovery