Participants: Arthur Nowlin (Host), Dr. Kim Logan-Nowlin (Host), Amos & Candace Walls
Series Code: MIW
Program Code: MIW000050A
|
00:01 Hi, I'm Dr. Kim Logan-Nowlin. And I'm Arthur Nowlin.
00:03 And welcome to "Making It Work." 00:37 Arthur, what is your favorite scripture in all the Bible? 00:41 What's your favorite? 00:42 "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart, 00:44 and lean not unto thine own understanding." 00:46 Proverbs five and six. "And in all thy ways..." 00:49 "...acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths." 00:52 Your path, Proverbs 3:5, 6. 00:55 Yeah. 00:56 Well, that's what we are gonna talk about 00:58 on Making in Work, trusting in the Lord. 01:01 Amen. 01:02 Is it difficult for you to trust in the Lord? 01:04 What do you do when times get difficult? 01:06 Who do you turn to? We need to turn to the Lord. 01:11 We need to trust in God 01:12 but sometimes it's not always that way. 01:15 Well, today on Making It Work, 01:17 we want to welcome Amos and Candace Walls. 01:20 Welcome to Making It Work. You're welcome. 01:22 Thank you. How you doing? 01:24 Good. Very well. 01:25 Well, okay, it is so good to have you here 01:27 and we have known you 01:29 and now we get a chance to interview you, 01:31 so thank you so much. 01:33 Tonight we want to talk about making it work. 01:36 How do you make it work 01:38 after you have been through such devastation? 01:41 Candace and Amos, tell us your testimony. 01:45 Well, first I'd like to say 01:47 that is also my favorite scripture too. 01:50 Excellent. 01:51 And the situation that we went through many years ago 01:56 really brought that scripture alive 01:59 in our hearts and in our lives. 02:04 I'm the youngest of a family of six 02:08 and less than 20 years ago 02:14 my family members started to become ill, 02:18 one right after another. 02:20 Really? 02:22 I had an older sister who developed breast cancer 02:28 and a few months before Amos and I were married, 02:33 my sister passed away. 02:36 Now a couple of months after Amos and I married, 02:41 my father passed away. 02:44 And then a few months after that, 02:47 in less than a year I had another sister, 02:50 my older sister passed away 02:54 and then a couple of years after that, 02:58 my last sibling passed away. 03:02 So within in less than five years, 03:07 I lost every living member of my family 03:11 and three of them died within three years, 03:17 within months of each other. 03:20 Amazing. 03:21 And our mother had passed away 03:24 many, many years before when I was young, 03:30 when I was in my early 20s. 03:32 But losing so many family members 03:38 so quickly was an experience 03:46 I could never have imagined. 03:49 You just don't think that you could ever experience 03:53 any tragedy of that nature to the point 03:58 where I didn't want to share, 04:04 you know, with co-workers and friends 04:06 because they would think, "Oh, no. 04:10 You know, not again. 04:12 Didn't she just lose her sister, 04:13 didn't she just lose her father? 04:16 Didn't she just lose another sister?" 04:19 And in going through the experience, 04:23 I felt for my friends. 04:25 Do I have to call them and tell them, 04:27 you know, someone else in my family has passed away? 04:33 What was going on? 04:34 Amos, join this time, here it is before the wedding, 04:37 right after the wedding. 04:38 What was going through your mind? 04:42 I think I saw the affect of her father's death the most 04:47 because what affected her the most. 04:49 And before that I was involved 04:52 with going over helping him finish, 04:58 well, he was trying to finish his house. 05:00 He was in a motorized chair, 05:05 so when we went over to visit I had a chance to know him, 05:09 just to have his relationship 05:11 and try to play with his big dog 05:15 so that I identify with him. 05:20 He was actually the same birthday as my dad 05:22 so I was like, there was correlates 05:25 but, we were out of town I remember the car. 05:31 We were out of town and her reaction was, 05:35 "Couldn't he waited till we got back?" 05:36 You know, I was like, "Wow." 05:38 So that's the thing that's still stuck in my mind 05:42 as far as being near and being supportive 05:47 and observing her reactions. 05:52 Did you go to counseling? 05:54 Did you think, did you go to counseling? 05:56 Did you get counseling during this period of time? 05:59 Well, it's interesting you would ask that 06:03 because yes, I went for counseling 06:06 and I hadn't intended to go to counseling. 06:10 What had occurred is I had the same family doctor 06:15 and I had lost my sister and then my dad 06:19 and then after I lost another sister, 06:22 coincidently I had a physical examination schedule 06:26 for a couple of weeks after she died 06:29 and I went to my appointment and my doctor, 06:33 I had a long term relationship with him, 06:36 asked me, "How things were going?" 06:39 And I said, "Well, actually 06:42 I just lost another family member." 06:44 My older sister died. 06:46 And he stepped back and he looked at me 06:49 and said, "Didn't you just lose another sister 06:53 and your father?" 06:55 I said, "Yeah, I did." 06:59 And he said, "It's been less than two or three years 07:06 with all the loss. 07:09 How are you doing?" 07:11 And we started to talk and I said, 07:12 "Oh, you know, I'm doing fine. 07:15 And I just have to keep strong 07:16 and have to take care of things and keep on trucking." 07:23 And he said, "You know, even though 07:28 you are in good physical health 07:29 and I don't find anything wrong with you, 07:33 you know, of course got to get blood work results back." 07:36 He said, "But you don't have any idea 07:38 how these things can affect you." 07:43 And he said, "I really urge you to get some counseling 07:48 and I'm gonna refer you 07:51 so that your insurance will take care of it." 07:54 And to tell you the truth, 07:55 I didn't think I needed counseling. 07:58 I was functioning as a matter of fact, 08:03 it had fallen to me to take care 08:05 of all the arrangements and the estates 08:08 and all the final affairs 08:11 of every last one of these people 08:14 and I had not completed 08:16 my father's estate when my sister died. 08:20 We were still going through that process 08:24 and I had to call the attorney and say, "Now, I need you 08:28 to take care of my sister's estate. 08:32 Let's just do it all 08:33 and when we finalized dad's estate." 08:37 They will know that he's now deceased too 08:41 and I was functioning, I was just, I got to dot this. 08:44 I got to go to work. We had... 08:47 You never took off of work? Excuse me. 08:49 You kept going? I kept going. 08:51 I took time off for the funeral whether it be a week 08:56 or, you know, however much time I needed to take care 09:03 of the arrangement and then I was... 09:05 Then you went back to work. To work each and every time. 09:09 And I don't know, I guess dealing 09:14 with loss affects people differently. 09:19 You know, we all have different personalities 09:21 and my way of coping was to keep on pushing. 09:28 Just deliberately live, "what do I have to do today? 09:31 What do I think about today? 09:34 What do I have to take care of today?" 09:36 Because that's how I coped, you know, with all of this. 09:41 That was the coping but when you went to work, 09:44 but what happened when you came in? 09:46 They came home and you were with your husband 09:48 how did you deal within? 09:52 I just functioned, you know, actually like nothing happened. 09:58 I had young children at that time. 10:00 I took care of the children. I went to games. 10:03 I took them to school. 10:06 I just functioned 10:11 and it wasn't until I went to see a counselor 10:16 that I realized that because of my trust 10:21 in the Lord and because I talk to Him 10:24 and I just knew that He would help me through this 10:29 and Amos was quite a support 10:33 and my staff were all wonderful, 10:38 you know, the people over me at work were wonderful. 10:41 My friends were supportive. 10:47 I honestly did not realize how much stress 10:53 I was under, you know, dealing with all this 10:56 until I actually went to see a counselor. 11:01 And when I went to see the counselor 11:04 and we talked it through, I had two sessions 11:08 and the counselor told me, 11:11 "You have really great coping mechanisms 11:16 and you are doing very well 11:19 but I want you to take a stress management program." 11:26 Is that right? 11:28 And she didn't prescribed medication 11:30 or anything like that 11:32 because, you know, by the grace of God 11:36 somehow I didn't fall into a mental illness. 11:43 As a matter of fact, after our sister died, 11:48 when we, I had one sister living still 11:53 when we experienced the three deaths in a row, 11:58 less than a year apart from each other, 12:01 and that sister, my older sister had a complete 12:04 and utter nervous breakdown. 12:07 Really? 12:08 So my, I had to go to court and get guardianship of her. 12:11 Wow. 12:12 And deal with her hospitalization 12:15 and take care of her 12:17 and may be that's why I felt that I couldn't breakdown. 12:23 You just couldn't do it. 12:25 Because I take care of her 12:26 and, you know, I'm getting a little emotional. 12:30 That's all right. Because she did. 12:31 She had, she lost her mind, you know, 12:35 and she was hospitalized and I dealt with that. 12:42 I went to the hospital, what three, four times a week? 12:45 Yeah. 12:47 You know, to see about her and to take care of her home. 12:51 She wasn't married 12:52 and she didn't have any children 12:54 so I took care of her home, I took care of her affairs, 12:58 I washed her clothes. 13:00 You know, I did all of that 13:02 while still taking care of my family. 13:05 You know, I can really relate to you 13:08 because I lost my last brother and it must have been June 13:16 and it was three of us. 13:17 So at this point like I'm the only one left 13:20 and that was, it took a while to adjust 13:23 but you are right, you know, people deal with it differently 13:26 and I would go to work 13:27 and act like nothing really was going on, you know. 13:33 Only at moments like when I would go home, 13:39 I would think about some situations that will come up 13:43 and remember how I responded to it 13:46 before when I recall one of my brother's death, I recall 13:51 and one day I felt myself reach for the phone 13:55 and I had to realize that none of them are alive anymore. 14:01 So, you know, I truly understand. 14:05 And he didn't take any time off. 14:07 He kept moving, kept going. 14:09 He did play a lot more golf which was good for him. 14:12 He was, you know, still doing family lives deal, 14:16 you know, with the Dare to Dream Network, 14:19 still doing that. 14:20 I never saw him really breakdown, 14:22 even to this day and then, like I said 14:25 when there was time for his brother's birthday 14:27 or something came up and he said to me one day, 14:30 "I'm the last one. 14:32 That's it." 14:33 And he wrote an article for the Michigan Chronicle 14:37 and we put a picture in there with he and his brother 14:41 and it did that really, you know, hit him. 14:44 So, you know, just going through the process, 14:47 you know, I'm blessed I still have two siblings. 14:50 I lost Derek many years ago, you know, 23 years ago 14:54 but it still seems like yesterday. 14:56 You know, Amos, are you the only child? 14:59 Tell us about your siblings or are they any other children? 15:02 Well, I'm the oldest and when I grew up, 15:04 it was four of us and so my whole life, 15:11 my dad passed away several years ago. 15:13 How was that? 15:15 Brothers still small so my primary care giver for that 15:18 but things worked out. 15:21 We found a place for us to be safe, 15:25 you know, somewhere else but I want to say observing him 15:32 as going through as a distractions 15:34 of taking care of her family, went away, 15:40 I saw her get closer to Jesus 15:43 and what I saw was I get more into the word, 15:48 health habits, you know, eating habits 15:52 became more strict. 15:54 Her understanding of the word became stronger to a point 15:58 where she was seeing things 16:02 so clearly now she is able to teach others on that. 16:06 More else I think 16:07 she was a little bit timid on doing that 16:11 and now she is taking that off. 16:15 She has also become a church elder here at Oakwood. 16:17 Is that right? Congratulations. 16:21 Yeah, that's really. Oh, yes. 16:22 Preach the word while so-- All right. 16:26 Okay, so I think I saw her get promotions 16:32 per se over the past 15 years and more responsibility on her 16:39 and so I think that she was able to focus on that 16:42 and I think that was stressful too, 16:48 becoming more responsible 16:49 and doing the work of three people. 16:51 And, but she was able to cope with it 16:54 and handle that 16:55 and now she is retired from that 16:58 and so she has turned another page from that 17:01 and she has yet to be brief 17:06 let's just say from the job 17:10 but I see her coming to a different page in her life 17:14 where she can focus on getting close to God 17:18 and, you know, us as well 17:22 as far as establishing different routines 17:26 and time together and planning some trips. 17:29 So those are the things that we've made adjustments, 17:34 but I'm really proud and how she has cope 17:39 with all those things. 17:43 I guess I want to say this that, 17:46 I know her sisters, you know, she was the youngest 17:50 and of course, sisters being older they can, 17:53 you know, see why you have 17:54 the little child kind of attitude 17:56 and that's what they kind of have 17:57 so they were really close like she was with her dad 18:01 and then just have to take care of their last days 18:08 and their last, you know, proceedings. 18:11 It's, she had to kind of come to groups 18:15 with the way she swiftly had grown up as a child 18:18 and then as an adult and then to be without them. 18:22 So I think that even now she held together I think 18:29 but this, they were so stressed 18:31 and it, still came through 18:36 but she's come through a stronger, 18:38 she's has had moral trust in Lord. 18:42 She's developed that fine tune that 18:46 and she uses that as her modus operandi. 18:50 I think it is the word for it. 18:52 That is beautiful. 18:53 Candace, I know you had mentioned earlier 18:56 the realization that you are the only 18:59 one of your family origin. 19:01 Let's talk about that. 19:05 I think God provides. 19:09 I know without a doubt that He loves us 19:13 no matter what we have to go through, 19:16 no matter what tragedies we have in our lives 19:20 and one thing that I really appreciate 19:24 and I know God did this was to bring 19:27 Amos and his family into my life. 19:31 His brothers are like my brothers. 19:34 His sister is like my sister. 19:38 His parents were like my parents. 19:40 And there was so much support from them 19:45 and from Amos and his family and I would think, 19:48 "Thank God Lord, that You have filled 19:56 devoid so beautifully." 20:00 And that's why I believe in trusting Him 20:05 because He will take care, He loves us. 20:08 And even though we hurt and we go through pain 20:13 and these things occur He is with us, 20:18 and He is there, right in it with us 20:22 and He so often surrounds us with the people 20:26 and the circumstances and He's right on time 20:30 and He knows where you need to be. 20:34 He knows who needs to be with you 20:38 and He provided all that for me. 20:41 And it was with great thanks 20:46 and appreciation after God brought me 20:51 through all those situations 20:53 that I realized He had been faithful 20:58 and that's the situations pushed me closer to the Lord 21:04 because as I stated earlier, 21:07 one of my sisters had lost her mind 21:11 when she and I were the last two left 21:14 and unfortunately she never recovered. 21:18 She never recovered? She never recovered. 21:19 And she also passed away and I believe 21:25 because, you know, when your family members die 21:31 and they are all believers in Christ 21:34 no matter what the circumstances 21:36 you have hope that you are gonna see them 21:39 and be with them again. 21:41 So I always held on into that 21:44 and I always thought everyday but for the grace of God, 21:50 I could have lost my mind but for the grace of God, 21:55 I could have gotten cancer 21:58 when I was in my 40s or other devastating illnesses. 22:05 One of my sisters died 22:07 from complications of type 2 diabetes 22:12 which she contracted at a very, very young age, 22:17 and not one of them made it. 22:22 None of the women in my family 22:25 made it to the age that I'm at now. 22:27 I've lived longer than any of them 22:30 and people would say to me, "Why aren't you afraid? 22:35 You know, you could have cancer or something like that." 22:39 And I would say, "No, I'm not afraid 22:44 because one of the things 22:47 that it is helpful to do sometimes 22:52 through you lose your loved one." 22:56 You can learn a lot from them, 22:58 from their life and also from their death, 23:02 and I began to examine at a very early age 23:06 because they died of illnesses 23:09 what were some of the habits that we had 23:12 and grew up with and so that their living 23:17 and their dying will not be in vain. 23:22 What can I do to honor their lives 23:26 by learning from their lives? 23:28 And that's a tremendous statement 23:31 because you have to hold on to that, 23:35 basically because you say to yourself, "Here I am. 23:40 I'm still alive and yet my siblings have passed away. 23:45 What did they do, you know, or what didn't they do 23:49 so I can improve on that." 23:51 And in a process it's not just trying to live longer, 23:55 it's trying to live a quality life 23:58 and a more spiritual life 23:59 where you can get closer to the Lord 24:01 and you know that this is a reward 24:03 because He apparently has something more 24:07 for you to do, you know, 24:08 and you have to say those things to yourself 24:11 and that's what I do asking myself as possibly I can. 24:16 I totally agree with that 24:18 and the Lord has been good 24:26 and I have been blessed and time has healed a lot 24:32 and a wonderful life and the fullness there of 24:37 and because God had been so faithful I can look back 24:42 and know that all things do work for the good. 24:46 Oh, yes. 24:48 For the called of the Lord, for those who love the Lord 24:51 in the call according to His purpose. 24:53 Yes. 24:55 And the Lord has been so faithful 25:00 when you go through whatever it is, 25:01 whether you are grieving 25:03 because you've lost a loved one 25:06 or there are other losses or issues or problems 25:10 that we go through in life 25:16 when you are going through God is with you, 25:18 when come out God has been with you. 25:21 And you can look back and really see 25:24 how faithful He was 25:27 and that gives me a peace and a joy 25:35 and an appreciation of God's love. 25:39 And that's what it's about. It's all about God's love. 25:43 Well, we have about a minute 25:44 and we just want to encourage all of you. 25:46 We want to thank you both, 25:49 Amos and Candace Walls for being with us. 25:51 Definitely. We love you both. 25:53 And, you know, I believe that you have to find a source 25:58 whether Amos he plays the organ 26:00 and Candace plays the violin and she even teaches 26:03 and I'm looking to join their class. 26:05 Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. 26:08 And because this is a part of healing and growth 26:10 but there's something you may be going through right now, 26:13 those of you watching right now, 26:15 go to the Lord in pray, seek the Lord 26:18 and remember to "Trust in the Lord 26:20 with all thine heart 26:21 and lean not unto thine own understanding. 26:23 In all thy ways acknowledge him, 26:25 and he will direct thy paths." 26:27 Don't try to figure it out, don't try to rationalize it. 26:31 Turn to the Lord 26:33 and we know He will see you through. 26:35 And I want to again I want to thank you both. 26:38 And, Arthur, may God bless you. I'm Dr. Kim Logan-Nowlin. 26:42 I'm Arthur Nowlin. God bless. |
Revised 2015-10-15