My Early Life
I was raised in a home with six mothers and thirty children in total. My father was the head of the house and his word was final as children we were taught to be seen and not heard by my father who at times couldn’t stand the noise in the house.
Although my father was strict and a firm believer of spare the rod spoil the child he was a loving man. It always surprised me that he was always able to recall all our names and whenever he engaged us in conversation it was always on something we had an interest in.
My mother was the fifth wife and I was the third child she had, when I was born it was a great day for her as she was the only wife who had not bore my father a son as of yet.
As per our custom my father chose my name and so I came to be John Harold Phillips, my mother’s third and my father’s twentieth child and the only boy she ever bore him.
We lived in a quiet but average sized town and it was a well-known fact that my father had six wives and twenty children, at the time of my birth. But that wasn’t that big a deal because about ten percent of the families in town were also polygamist.
They were a few in our town who were very vocal in their opposition of my family’s beliefs and as children my brothers and I were often involved in brawls in honor of the family name.
I remember that after one such brawl I ended up with a broken nose and a busted lip I ran home to my mother crawled into her lap and cried. She was comforting me when my father walked in and as hard as I tried I couldn’t stop crying. I felt embarrassed and ashamed because here I was a man crying in my mother’s lap with my father looking down at me with what I thought at the time was great pity and disappointment.
I expected him to scold me perhaps even instruct me to stop acting liking a girl and toughen up but he didn’t instead he scooped me up into his arms wiped away my tears and asked me in the gentlest voice I’d ever he’d him use what the matter was.
“Why,” I asked, “why is life so hard for us? Why do people hate us so much? If what we are doing is right in the eyes of the Lord then why do we have to suffer so much?”
As he wiped away my tears and tended to my busted lip and nose he said, “John do you believe in God,” I nodded my head yes and he carried on in that patient manner of his which we as boys rarely saw, “then know this God will never put an obstacle in your way that He knows you will not be able to conquer. Know that the devil and his agents are always around and at all times they will try to divert you from the correct path but as long as you have faith they will never succeed and so it is with those who discredit and disparage us. They mock us because they fear what they do not understand and in that fear the devil and his agents thrive so I say to you,” by this time my mother had gathered all the children in the house so that they to could share in the lesson which was being delivered to me by our father.
“When they attack you with their fists and their words strike back with you faith and let them know that by attacking you they attack not a man made of flesh and bone but the Lord who is behind and with you in everything you do.” He ended this little speech with one of his favorite saying’s a saying which over the years has proven itself true to me on more than one occasion, “remember when the devil knocks on your door it will be loud enough to draw your attention and the attention of those around you and when he enters your house he will enter with all his friends in an attempt to bring about your downfall. But when the Lord knocks at your door it will only be loud enough to draw your attention and when he enters He will be by Himself as He has already sent his angels to watch over you. Even when you lose faith in him he will never lose faith in you.”
That is one of my favorite memories of my father.
Living in a house with so many children there was never a shortage of drama we’d often get into fights over the silliest things but the one thing I never saw in my family was my parents fighting nor did I ever see my mother’s fight with each other and at that age I actually believed that they had achieved the unattainable they had learned to live together in harmony just as the Bible taught.
Boy was I wrong but I would only discover this later in my life when I was starting to make my own path.