The Pre-Amends Process

I have a friend who owes a ton of money in back child support. The number seems so big that he feels hopeless; in frustration he stopped paying any child support at all. He is eager to make amends to his ex-wife, but his sponsor has cautioned him to slow his roll.

In fact, he strongly encouraged him to address the issue of child support before making the amends. My friend thinks this is crazy talk, but nonetheless, he listened. His salary is meager but he figured out how he could give $5.00 per week to his ex. He owes thousands of dollars, so from my friend’s perspective this seems like spitting into the wind. But he does it.

He made these payments for a solid year and soon, very soon, his sponsor thinks he might just be ready to make an amends.

The amends itself is deceptively easy:

1. I was wrong when_______________________ (be specific) and I know this harmed you.

2. What can I do to make this right?

But we must proceed with caution. Here are the concerns that we also need to address:

We need the follow up question - Did I miss anything? Perhaps we remember 4 harming things we have done. The other person may reply, “Are you nuts? Those four things are no big deal to me, but THIS. THIS thing right here that you did when you ______. THAT DEVASTATED ME.”

Back to listening we go.

We do not always know what harm we have caused or we may be confused about the other’s perspective on harm.

When this happens, we do not get into an argument (a big listening fail), instead, we thank them for the feedback and go back to our support system to help us sort out this new information.

But in all things the rule is this: do not harm.