This was a big stumbling block in my life. Not only was I a confused 11-12 year old girl, I also started to question God in my life. Why would a God who supposedly loved His creations allow something so bad to happen to one of them? The only good thing that occurred my fourth grade year was the birth of my little sister, Cheyenne Gabrielle Phillips. For the next two years, I was angry with God and could care less about anything that had to do with Christianity. During my sixth grade year, my father got to come home. He was able to see me walk across the stage. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a " Daddy's Girl-. I cannot live without my dad. Without my dad here with me, I could not keep going on. There were many times when I just wanted to give up. I still, to this day do not realize how I made it through this rough time. I guess I just realized that my brothers, sister, and mother needed me to be strong for them. When my father was able to see me walk across the stage at graduation, I changed my outlook on God some. Maybe He allowed something bad to happen in order to get my attention. I know that I had stayed bitter about this for a long time. Even to this day, I still have some bitterness inside of me.
Now, my seventh grade year started out normal. I was somewhat back online with Christ, and I had my whole family there with me. We were attending East Lake Baptist Church regularly and my brothers, sister and I were attending Tennessee Temple. Still bitter at God, I thought, "What else could happen? What more could go wrong?- Well, no sooner than I questioned it, it happened. My pastor, Jonas Taylor, moved with his family to go pastor a church in Maryland. After this happened, our church merged with East Ridge Baptist Church. We went to this church faithfully for about one month. Then, we noticed that everyone who went to East Lake with us stopped attending because the people at East Ridge were very unwelcoming.