Mud Sweat & Tears - Bear Grylls [29]
Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about.
Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg.
I was devastated.
I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life.
‘Please, God, comfort me.’
Blow me down … He did.
My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.)
To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies.
This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes.
The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life.
This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being.
Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree.
I had found a calling for my life.
I do owe so much of my faith to a few best friends at school who, especially in the early days, nurtured that faith in me. They helped me, guided me, and have stood beside me ever since as my buddies: the great Stan, Ed and Tom.
As for my other great buddies at school, like Mick, Al, Watty, Hugo and Sam, they simply considered this new found Christian faith of mine was a monumental waste when it came to getting girls!
Talking of getting girls, in case you were wondering, it was because of my faith that I only kissed that beauty of a German girl I met, and didn’t end up making love. (Although, I must admit, it took all my strength at the time to resist that one!)
Despite all my friends thinking I was utterly mad, deep down I felt a determination to try to keep my virginity for my wife one day.
But that really is another story …
CHAPTER 26
So that was Eton for me, and I look back now with a great sense of gratitude: gratitude that I got to have such a great education, and gratitude that my father had worked so damned hard so as to be able to afford to send me there.
I never really thanked him as I should have – but I just hope somehow he knows how grateful I am for all he gave me.
Eton did, though, teach me a few key lessons: it showed me the value of a few close friends, and how those friendships really matter as we walk through our days. It also taught me to understand that life is what you make of it. And with that there comes responsibility.
No one will do it all for you. That is left to each of us: to go out, to grab life and to make it our own.
My time at Eton did develop in me a character trait that is essentially, I guess, very English: the notion that it is best to be the sort of person who messes about and plays the fool