My Bumpy Journey on the Road to Find God!: Recollections of a Wayward Pipsqueak

By Jim Painting

As a baby boomer, the author found himself in many unfortunate situations while growing up and becoming an adult. These troublesome and often humorous moments were usually caused by his own defiance, curiosity, and goofy judgment. The book shares several incidents that ultimately led a self-conscious loner to developing a relationship with God. Despite breaking windows, engaging bullies, falling from trees, losing friends, eating bugs, and riding sheep, to name a few incidents, the author discovered God had been walking with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543421286

Jim Painting

Jim Painting grew up in Olmsted Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He is an ordained minister and has served in churches in Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia for nearly 40 years. Since 2007 he has also been the curator of The Ashton House Museum in Carrollton, Ohio. The museum displays artifacts of both historical and nostalgic interest. Jim is married to Elaine J. Amos Painting and the two of them have five children and eight grandchildren.

Book preview

Introduction

This book of stories and poetry is a series of recollections of some of the foolish moments from my youth and early adult years. I had a great childhood that was also filled with many mischievous and disobedient events. Thankfully, I also grew up in an environment where love and forgiveness were the normal modes of behavior. I have been a minister for nearly fifty years—a very unexpected direction in my life. All my years have been filled with the wonder and awe of God’s guiding hand. But the lessons I learned in life often didn’t make sense at the time or went unnoticed. There were many times I probably missed God’s touch because I wasn’t paying attention or I just didn’t have enough experience to realize God was speaking.

My parents were special people, but sadly, like many children, I didn’t realize how special until long into adulthood. We attended church for a while when I was very young, but something happened in the church, and my parents quit attending. At the time, there was one Protestant and one Roman Catholic church in town. When I was a teen, a new church was started in my hometown of Olmsted Falls, Ohio, and I felt a need to attend. I didn’t know why! Despite all the fun and the many adventures I had while growing up, something was missing in my life, and I felt a church might help fill that void. That’s how God often works. Out of nowhere, God gets into our heads and our hearts and keeps calling us until, hopefully, we respond.

The church was in a new building, and the worship area was combined with the fellowship hall. As a result, the sanctuary didn’t look that much like the worship areas I had been in before. But I have discovered over the years that a church building is not the most important aspect of church life. The gathered people, not the building, are the truest representatives of God. It is the people who are the church, and those people lifted me to new spiritual heights.

I also learned through my years as a minister that just gathering for worship does not make the people a church. It is when the community of believers is excited and responsive to the call of God that a true church comes into existence.

As I started to attend worship, I felt that I was welcome. That was important to me as a teenager. The sermons, the prayers, the singing—everything that was happening in worship touched me. I can’t really explain what I was feeling because it was all new to me. I just knew that I wanted to keep coming back. I was so excited to hear about the teachings of Jesus that I convinced my parents to attend. It wasn’t long until I accepted Jesus as Lord, and not long thereafter, I felt called to enter the ministry. I knew very little of what ministers did, but I was certain that was what I was supposed to do. I wish I could say there was an overnight transformation, but there wasn’t. It has taken me a lifetime to know what God wants from me, and the learning process continues. I have made plenty of mistakes in my life, and this book will share some of the more humorous ones. I have also been blessed with some spectacular memories, and I want to share them. Perhaps they will be an inspiration.

I want to dedicate this book to my wife, Elaine, who has put up with my many idiosyncrasies and oddities. She is a true child of God and an inspiration to me. I also want to thank my parents, Wayne and Marian Painting, and Elaine’s mom, Eleanor Amos, because they showed love for me in difficult times. Finally, I can’t forget our children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. They have kept me young. The light of God shines through them!

I pray this book will make you smile, laugh, and ponder how God is present in your life. I have come to learn that God often shows up in my life in unexpected ways. Often, those are the most precious.

Getting on the Bus and Out of the Block Drawer!

We lived in the same house all the years I was growing up, and the school building was a couple miles away. It wasn’t far, but I obviously could not walk to school in the early years of school life. When it was time to attend kindergarten, there was a bus stop just a couple of blocks away at the Village Green. My mother had spent several weeks explaining what school was all about, but I didn’t want to go. There were no children living close to our house that I knew well, so I wasn’t used to hanging around with other kids. Plus, it was fun hanging out at home with my mom.

I am certain that I am not the first child who didn’t really want to go to school, and I made sure my mom was aware of my feelings. Nevertheless, the day arrived when I would begin my career as a student, and Mom walked me to the school bus stop. There were other kids waiting for the bus, and I don’t think I knew any of them—at least not well. All the while we were waiting for the bus, I kept whining about not wanting to go.

Finally, the bus arrived, and everyone got on except me. I threw a temper tantrum—a huge temper tantrum! I’m sure my mom was embarrassed, but I wouldn’t quit. I would imagine the bus driver was frustrated since it was the first day of school and he was on a schedule, but I kept screaming. Eventually, my mother asked if she could go with me on the bus for just this one day. I wasn’t happy with the idea, but I was willing to get on the bus if my mom could come as well. Sadly, the bus driver said it was against school policy to allow parents to ride on the bus with their children. After listening to his explanation, my mom said thank you, and the bus went on to school without me.

I had won! Alas, it was a very short-lived victory. My mom walked me (dragged might be a better term) home at a very fast pace while squeezing my hand very hard. She explained that I would need to go to school whether I liked it or not, and then she put me into the car. It goes without saying that she was not in a good mood and was very angry with me. The short drive to school was not pleasant in any way. She made it clear that she was going to tell my dad about my behavior. Then she explained that like it or not, I would be taking the bus home after school. The anger in her face made it clear that it would be unwise to argue that point. Mom would be there at the bus stop when I arrived home.

At the time, all the grades were in one huge old building, which made school even more frightening. Since Mom didn’t know where my classroom was located, she dragged me to the school office. After explaining what had happened, she was given directions as to how to find the kindergarten room. We walked down the halls quietly until we finally reached my room. My hands were red from being squeezed, and my mother did not say a single word. She opened the door to the classroom, made eye contact with my teacher, and then pushed me inside and shut the door—still without a word. I don’t believe I ever hesitated to board a school bus again.

But that was not the end of my kindergarten adventures. I discovered I really enjoyed school. (Mom knew I would!) I liked the other kids and even the instruction. It was actually fun to learn new things. A whole new world was opening up for me. Nevertheless, I was shy most of the time. I had no self-confidence, so it took a long while for me to fit in with the others. Once I felt comfortable, my shyness would disappear, but it wasn’t easy.

I discovered fairly early that I could make people laugh. Usually, that made the other kids like me—or at the very least, they accepted me. There was a problem, however, and that was that I didn’t always know when to quit trying to be funny. It is one thing to tell a few jokes, but it is very different just to act silly, and that was me. I did silly things, and I did them often. The silliness was my mechanism to overcome feeling unworthy around others.

Unfortunately, what I thought was funny was not always true. I quickly discovered that knocking down someone’s tower of blocks wasn’t funny to them. Trying to make a joke in the middle of someone’s story was usually only funny to me. Making fun of people’s clothing or laughing at them when they spilled their milk wasn’t funny to them. In other