Revelations and Tears

Well, tonight we had a long conversation with our oldest daughter. One that began with tears, was full of accusations and misconceptions when it ended there were more tears but most important "a revelation". No, I am not about to replay an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond! I am talking about life in the Phillips household. Lest you get the wrong idea, this is not a regular occurrence in our home but ever since we announced that God was calling us to Africa we have had a few conversations similar to the one I mentioned above. These other conversations were similar in that they were full of tears, accusations and misconceptions but none of them held any revelations. What was the topic of these conversations, you ask? I think I have mentioned in a previous post that my oldest daughter had not been able to make up her mind about going on the trip, o.k. now you can guess what we were discussing in these tearful conversations. Yep, you got it, myself, my wife or both of us had been trying to convince our daughter that she should go with us, let me tell you that was no easy task. I finally gave up as it seemed every time I tried I just drove a wedge between us deeper and deeper. I decided that if God wanted her to go He would have to convince her, just as he had convinced my wife she should go. So I turned it over to Him and I did my best not to mention it to her again. Well tonight was another story, I didn't bring it up it was my wife and she had good reason to. She had also up until this point tried to just let Taylor work it out with the Lord. Tonight however, Taylor was wanting us to sign some school related papers and it was something that would possibly interfere with the trip to Africa, so it was a quick slide down a very slippery slope that was by far the most tearful confrontation that we had had up to this point. After all was said and we had told her to just go to her room and pray about it more, she stopped us and said that she had just had a revelation and said that she would go with us. We were dumbstruck, after all that she had said, she just changed her mind in less than a second. I asked her had she been praying and she shared that she had but that she was still not sure what to do. So after her revelation we told her to just go to bed and pray about it and let us know tomorrow what she wanted to do. She then told me that she would but that she was pretty sure she was going to go with us. My wife and I had succeeded in wiping away some misconceptions that Satan had planted in her mind. It was a good night in the Phillips household, I know that my wife will sleep better tonight.

Gary Phillips