Life Lessons and Love Languages: The Unexpected Journey of Dr. Gary Chapman

By Gary Chapman

Get to know the man behind the 5 Love Languages®. You just might discover yourself along the way.

Many people are familiar with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of The 5 Love Languages®. Millions have been transformed by this New York Times bestselling book. But as influential as Gary has been, the surprising thing is . . . he’s just a regular guy, not much different than you and me. And in the mirror of his life, you might discover your own story, too.

In Life Lessons and Love Languages, you’ll look behind the curtain for a glimpse of Gary’s life, from his upbringing in Small Town, USA to becoming a bestselling author and international speaker. What makes him tick may surprise you!

In Gary’s story, you’ll discover five great influences that shaped his, and most of our lives: home, education, marriage, children, and vocation. Even if you don’t experience each influence yourself, you’ll benefit from seeing how these pillars of human society work together to form productive individuals. Getting to know Gary will be a lot of fun. But getting to know yourself and how the world works is a gift that this small-town kid doesn’t want you to miss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Apr 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9780802499790

Gary Chapman

Gary Chapman--author, speaker, counselor--has a passion for people and for helping them form lasting relationships. He is the #1 bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages series and director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, Inc. Gary travels the world presenting seminars, and his radio programs air on more than four hundred stations. For more information visit his website at www.5lovelanguages.com.

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Acknowledgments

Introduction

Many of us are living so fast that we seldom stop to reflect on what we are doing, why we are doing it, and where it is leading. We are creatures of action, always doing something, but seldom taking time to talk to ourselves about the bigger issues of life. Entertainment, pleasure, and the pursuit of happiness have become the goals of many. Yet even when these goals are attained, the human spirit cries out for something more.

In the world of technology, humankind has reached heights never thought imaginable when I was a child. The accessibility of knowledge on any subject is at our fingertips. We are the most educated people in history, and yet we still fight each other like ancient tribal cultures. Why? What do we hope to accomplish? Where are we going? These are questions faced by the new generation. We can only hope that they find answers.

However, for those of us who are nearing the end of our journey, it is also time for reflection. Time to look back and ask, Where have we been? What have we accomplished? And what lies ahead? How did I get to where I am? Or how did I become me?

Having entered the last quarter of my game, I am taking time to ask that question. I am looking back on a life that has been extremely satisfying. I have few regrets. I am greatly blessed and humbled when I take time to meditate on my journey. In the pages ahead, I am sharing my reflections with a desire to encourage those who follow after me.

I believe that too often one generation fails to share with the next the wisdom that has come through the joys and sorrows of life. And sometimes the rising generation has failed to ask questions and listen to older adults. In pursuit of the latest idol, they miss the wisdom right in front of them. It is my desire that my reflections will encourage other older adults to do likewise. Published or unpublished, the recording of your journey has the potential of greatly impacting your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is also my prayer that younger adults who read these pages will be motivated to reach out to the older adults in their life and ask questions about their life’s journey. Their successes you may want to emulate, and their failures you may be able to avoid.

I hope to share with you some of the failures and successes in my own life and what I learned from both. I also want to pay tribute to the many people who have impacted my life. None of us are who we are simply by our own self-efforts. We have been influenced by many people and circumstances.

I could not have planned the life I have lived. Don’t get me wrong, I had plans, but most of them did not turn out the way I had imagined. I have become keenly aware of the reality of the ancient Hebrew proverb: In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps (Prov. 16:9). By the age of seventeen, I did know that I wanted to invest my life in serving Christ by serving people. That plan came to fruition, but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined what that would look like.

In those early years, if someone had suggested that I would spend half of my life counseling couples, I probably would have asked, What’s a counselor? The very idea that I would become a writer and author of more than fifty books would have raised the question, Why would I write a book and what in the world would I say? Even when I became an author, if someone had predicted that my books would be translated and published in over fifty languages, I likely would have said, You have got to be kidding!

If someone had told me that I would earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in anthropology, I would have asked, What’s anthropology? If someone had told me that I would earn a PhD degree, I likely would have asked, What does PhD mean? I could see myself finishing high school and attending college, but after that, I was expecting to go to work.

I never dreamed that my life would take me to speak at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, or to a gathering of ambassadors to the US from thirty countries, or at a luncheon with Members of Parliament in London, discussing how the church and government could cooperate more fully in meeting human needs. Nor would I have imagined that I would lead marriage and family workshops in more than twenty countries around the world. And I certainly would never have expected to work on the same church staff for fifty years. No, I could not have planned the life I have lived. Yes, I made my plans, but the Lord determined my steps.

In the following pages, I hope to trace the hand of God in using so many people and circumstances to accomplish His plans for my life. I will frame my journey as five major influences on my life. (As you may know, I like the number five.) I will share the lessons I learned along the way, each lesson preparing me for the next step in my journey. I hope that what I share will encourage you in your own journey with God. You too likely have plans for your life, and that is fine; only hold those plans in an open hand to God. He will also direct your steps.

SECTION ONE

Early Influences from Home

1938–1955

Life in Small-Town USA

What I share in the next few pages is designed to give you a picture of what life was like growing up in a small North Carolina town with my mom, dad, and sister, Sandra. The first seventeen years of my life, in that setting, greatly influenced my life.

After forty years of doing marriage and family counseling, I am keenly aware that children are strongly impacted by the family in which they grow up. My deepest emotional pain has come from seeing children who grew up with absentee or abusive parents. Much of my life has been spent in trying to help them break the destructive patterns learned in childhood.

Those of us who grew up in stable, loving families are given a distinct advantage in life. For that I am deeply grateful. Sam and Grace, Dad and Mom, were married for sixty-two years. They were not perfect, but they were a hard-working, God-loving couple who created a safe and loving environment for Sandra and me.

It all started in Kannapolis, North Carolina. When the boll weevil ate the cotton crop in Georgia, my father’s family moved from the farm to work in the textile mill in Kannapolis. At that time, Kannapolis was the largest unincorporated town in North Carolina. Cannon Mills owned the entire town. They owned and rented out all of the mill houses. They owned all of the stores and provided the police and fire protection for the community.

It was there that Sam and Grace met and fell in love. In 1935, at the ages of twenty-three and twenty-five, they eloped to South Carolina, where they were married. None of their parents were aware that they were married. For three months, each continued to live with their parents until they got enough money to rent their own house. Years later, I asked my mother, Did you have sex during this time? To which she responded, No, not until we got our own place. (Life was different in the 1930s.)

The doctor told my mother that she probably would not be able to have children. But she prayed, and one year later, on January 10, 1938, I was born. Four years later, my sister was born. Mom was always grateful for her children, and once I heard the doctor’s prediction, I always sensed that God had a hand in our births.

At the age of two, I moved with my parents to a new house that they had built in China Grove, four miles north of Kannapolis. (Not the China Grove that the Doobie Brothers sang about.) It was named for the chinaberry tree, of which there were groves. All of my childhood memories center around this house, which cost $5,016 brand new. And it had indoor plumbing. (Life was different in the ’30s.)

Then came the war (World War II). My father’s brother had moved to Syracuse, New York, to work in a steel mill. The word was that if you worked in a defense plant you would not be drafted into the military. My dad decided he would rather work in the steel mill than dodge bullets. So we moved to Syracuse. We were only there for eighteen months. My only memory is that in the winter, the snow was taller than I was. After the severe winters, my dad decided he would rather be in the military, whereupon he moved the family back to China Grove, and he joined the Navy.

For the next three years, Mom was the solo parent. She wrote Dad a letter almost every day. He was on board a ship without daily mail deliveries. He later told us that sometimes he received a bundle of letters, but he eagerly read each one. Periodically we would receive a letter from Dad. I remember listening as my mother read his letters to Sandra and me. At the end of the letters, he would almost always say to us, Give your mother a big hug for me and remember to obey her.

Our house was the third house on the right on the one-lane dirt street that ended at the railroad track embankment. The houses were close and the neighbors were friendly. My grandfather lived in the first house with my grandmother, who was bedridden, and their daughter, Reba Nell, and her son, Kinney. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Hazel lived in the second house. They had two sons, Bobby and Darrell. We often played backyard basketball behind their house. On Saturdays, young men from the Black community half a mile away would come and join us. (These were the days of racial segregation.) We always enjoyed playing together, but when the game was over, they went back to their community, and on Monday, they went to their school, and we went to ours. (Things were different in the ’40s.) But here the seeds were planted in my mind that all men are created equal. These seeds would continue to grow in the coming years.

Behind the house was a large garden space where I learned to plant potatoes, corn, green beans, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes,