iMessage not working iPhone 6+

Good evening. Wondering if anyone else is experiencing similar issues with iMessage on the 6+ or on any of their phones:

Noticed about a month ago that when I selected a message it would hang before it opened and then it would only show the last message. I would shut phone off and the message was all there. Then it became more of a regular thing..my screen would darken slightly and none of my messages would go thru and I couldn't receive any. Hard reset of the phone...all back to normal but then same issues. The only way I knew I was getting messages would be because my iPad would alert me or messages on my mac. I have tried several tips from hard reset, to shutting off iMessage, rebooting. I signed out of iCloud on all devices and reentered them one at a time. I am finding I can't trust when I might miss a message or not. As soon as I reboot the phone my messages al come flooding in. Noticing this happens when I am away from home and not on same wifi as other devices. Have Verizon and they just pushed a carrier update..not sure that will mean anything or not. I have not tried reseting all network settings yet. Anyone else coming close to experiencing any of these things or is it my phone having its own problems?

Thanks for reading.

PS. Also noticing that when I delete a conversation it sometimes comes back after a reboot and it always still appears on iPad and iMac. I can't delete a conversation on one and it removes it from all?