A Wayward Youth
Although the self-effacing book sheds light on his mischievous and sometimes reckless younger years, Graham also illuminates great admiration and love for his elders: parents, grandparents, and family friends. The book is especially a love letter to his father, who died in 2018. In fact, Graham makes it clear that his father’s chivalry, faith, and attention modeled a way of life and servitude that the young Graham eventually adopted.
As with any child of a renowned parent, Graham had “Big Footprints to Fill,” which is the title of the book’s first chapter. He shares just a few of the countless letters and telegrams that poured into the Graham home when their first son was born. “Good luck and best wishes to the young preacher” was just one of the messages that Graham later considered pressure, rather than praise.
Determined to choose a life opposite of his father’s—whose sermons were broadcast into 185 countries and who prayed with 12 consecutive presidents—Graham smoked at an early age and drank, drove fast, and ignored his studies as a teenager and college student. A Southern boy growing up in the North Carolina mountains, Graham’s focus instead was on “Guns, Dogs, and Rock ‘n Roll,” the title of the book’s second chapter.
Graham’s fights with students and rebellion towards an education in their hometown of Montreat, North Carolina, resulted in him being sent to a New York boarding school, where he didn’t fare much better. He barely made it through high school and was kicked out of the first college he attended.
In an informal manner, Graham relays both poignant and unorthodox examples of his upbringing—like when his globe-trotting father took time to take him camping and his perky mother tried to sicken him toward smoking by making him smoke a whole pack of cigarettes in one sitting.
One story that stands out in Graham’s storytelling presents the grace that his father showed, not only to him and other children, but to strangers as well. When a belligerent stranger showed up at the family’s home and uttered threats, “Daddy slugged him,” wrote Graham.
Tough Love Pays Off
The more Graham pushed his parents, the more they provided ways for him to learn from his mistakes and choose better routes. Then, during a trip to Switzerland, the 20-something-year-old Graham was walking along Lake Geneva with his parents after a meal when his father said to him: “I want you to know we’re proud of you, Graham. We love you no matter what you do in life and no matter where you go. But you’re going to have a make a choice.” That “choice” was following God or rejecting him.The few words his father spoke became Graham’s turning point; gradually, wise elders and smart decisions began to shape his future. He started traveling worldwide to learn the basic needs of people impoverished due to famine, disease, poverty, and natural disaster. He became the president and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, and, like his father before him, he started preaching to millions and offering spiritual guidance to U.S. presidents and world leaders.
Graham states, “I have no idea how this field will plow.” Perhaps he didn’t anticipate when he wrote the book in his early 40s that the rebellious youth would one day be invited to provide the invocation for a president’s inauguration.
“But one thing you can be sure of,” he articulated in the book’s last sentence, “this Graham is gonna keep preaching.”
And, indeed he has.
