Money is a subject that has held both endless challenge and fascination for me.Whether that is genetic or comes from example, I don’t know. At 20, I entered a convent, embracing a solemn vow of poverty, refusing to have anything to do with even a dime in my pocket. At 38, I left the order to face another reality: earning a lean salary working in the service of the church. Then suddenly, everything changed. A generous inheritance from my parents presented me with a far different struggle. Was there no end to the money puzzle?
Led by a friend, I read Jacob Needleman’s book, Money and the Meaning of Life. I realized: It’s not that we consider money too important, but that we don’t consider it important enough.
Money was vital and I needed to be okay with it. In the end, I came to see that all God really wanted was for me to be myself – a woman deeply shaped, conditioned, and blessed by a unique relationship with money. Taking in that truth, I set out to explore other women’s unique relationships to money. The result was I wrote a book called Money As Sacrament.
In this article, I share how some remarkable women healed their money anxieties.
Chris, a striking redhead, trustingly told me of a hidden dark past. “I had placed myself in relationships that financially drained me. I hear about women who get divorced and come out smelling like a rose. But, damn,” she said, pulling a strand of wavy hair behind her ear. “That didn’t happen to me.”
Chris’s voice cracked like dry weeping each time she spoke of her former marriages. “My first husband and I made a lot of money, but he spent it as quickly as we made it. My second husband couldn't hold a job. I spent long hours trying to cover a flood of his bills. When I discovered that he was spending uncontrollably, and that the bank was foreclosing on a home that I alone had purchased, it was too late. I lost my home.”
Even now, Chris remains amazed at her dysfunctional behavior. “Do you wonder how I could have been so naive?” she wondered out loud. “I can’t believe it myself!”
I’d heard similar stories from other women: stories of bankruptcy, stories of lost inheritances. Yet, in some mysterious, “God-crazy way” Chris’s dark past had now forged a confident and reverent woman.
“Let me tell you about Ben, my miracle,” she says. “He’s a phenomenon of enchantment. Yes, he lives in a wheelchair, suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. Yet Ben is a soulful optimist and despite his disability, he affirms over and over that life is good. As for our money, he handles it all electronically. When I write a check, he enters it into the computer. We make all our financial decisions together. No longer am I kept in the dark about what’s in the bank. No longer am I paranoid about what’s in the bank and what isn’t.”
So often, we women cannot see much beyond a narrow financial focus. Healing often comes from someone helping us find a new mind, a new trust, a complete renewal of sensible behaviors.
Linking money and spirituality
The majority of women interviewed for my book believed that money and spirituality are intertwined in deep and mysterious ways. One couple I’d like to tell you about now didn’t make the pages of my book. Money as Sacrament was already on the bookstore shelves when I first heard about them.
Margie and Peter’s story is one of strength and blessing, a story that goes to the heart of the money and spirituality link. As Margie puts it, “The universe listened when Peter and I determined to live debt-free.”
Before they met, Peter, 31, had been diagnosed with stage-four cancer. Each year, doctors checked him out and questioned how much more time he had left. Alone and despondent, purchase after purchase, Peter ran the fool’s race of credit card sprees. Bills arrived, including medical statements. and he simply dumped them unopened into a laundry basket. When Margie met him, there were two basketfuls of unopened bills.
As for Margie, she carried a debt of her own: more than $45,000. “Debt was second nature,” she says. “I never even hoped I could be without it.” Finally she sought the aid of a counselor and with her help, began to develop a spiritual consciousness about money. “Clearly, the burden of debt wasn’t what God wanted for me.”
Margie moved in with Peter and as their love grew stronger, new doors to possibilities flew open.
“I saw the necessity of continuing that money consciousness I had started,” she says. “So each week, Peter and I sat together to discuss our money status, and how that debt impacted our relationship. More importantly, how it impacted his health.”
They became engaged and soon after, Peter landed a job in Florida with Disney. His health was miraculously back on track.
Led by some inner determination, Margie found Suze Orman’s book, The Seven Steps to Financial Freedom.
“Each week, we faithfully sat together, read a chapter, examined our fears about money and what baggage we carried. We learned a lot about each other’s fears, about our lack of trust in each other, our spending, our saving, that sort of thing.”
What was increasingly clear to this couple became the basis for action, almost second nature.
“Working together on the cancer issue, we saw results: Peter was becoming more healthy. So we could free ourselves of debt if we both worked at it. It didn’t matter whose debt. Debt was debt! We were in this together.”
How long did it take? Not the ten years they had supposed, but as Margie reports, “We were debt-free in two and a half years.”
Margie’s final summary rings true for us all. “In our move to higher consciousness, we found that by mindful intention to pay down all debt, the universe responded,” she says. “Money started showing up from unexpected places. Little job opportunities rolled in. The final miracle was that the hospital freed Peter from a $10,000 debt. The forgiveness of that debt would never have happened without our radical intention.”
Peter remains cancer-free to this day.
It is impossible not to hold in reverence these stalwart women who climbed the mountain from ignorance to financial wisdom. Money became their upward path to healing and yes, to holiness. I wish that kind of healing for all women reading these stories. And don’t forget to honor your own story. You have no idea how profoundly it speaks to another.
