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Tullian Tchividjian

@tulliantch

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Author, Speaker, Founder and Lead Ragamuffin @thesanctuaryfl || New book “Fragments of Freedom” NOW AVAILABLE. Order here ↙️

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I recently watched an interview with Robert Plant where Dan Rather asked him a deceptively simple question: “Who are you?”

Plant took his time answering.

He eventually described himself as something like the accumulated resonance of everything that had happened to him…everything he’d experienced, lost, loved, and seen.

He talked about losing his five-year-old son, Karac, and said that tragedy was, in many ways, his “gateway into manhood.” It opened his eyes. It changed the way he saw life.

He ultimately described himself and his songs as “meanderings from a guy who’s got his eyes open.”

I love that.

Plant’s answer got me thinking about my own identity.

As a Christian, I believe my deepest identity is given, not forged. But even that doesn’t make the question “Who am I?” simple.

I’m still a man with a history. A body. Memories. Relationships. Losses. Regrets. Loves. Places I miss. People I miss. Things that happened to me and things I made happen.

Belonging to Christ doesn’t erase any of that. It gives me the freedom to look at all of it with my eyes open.

And what Robert Plant is pointing out is that who we are can’t be reduced to a résumé, a role, a belief system, or even the best and worst things we’ve done.

We are, in part, the sum total of what we’ve seen.

The people who loved us. The people who left us. The people we hurt. The people who hurt us. The songs that found us at exactly the right moment. The places we can’t drive past without remembering. The seasons we desperately miss. The mistakes we wish we could undo. The losses that rearranged us.

All of it leaves a resonance.

And some things open our eyes in ways we never would have chosen. Loss can do that. Failure can do that. Heartbreak can do that. Love can do that.

We are shaped by echoes. Of people. Of places. Of failures. Of forgiveness. Of love. Of loss. Of a thousand moments I didn’t realize were becoming part of me while I was living them.

Just the meanderings of a man trying to keep his eyes open. #identity #robertplant by @tulliantch

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a month ago

Big announcement‼️

I’ve written a new book 🙌🏻

It’s called “Fragments of Freedom: Bits and Pieces of a Life Unchained”—and it’s unlike anything I’ve ever released.

Sixty-two diary-like reflections. Raw. Unfiltered. Immersive.

Written in the in-between spaces—late nights, long drives, playlists on repeat—these pages gather scattered confessions, memories, moods, and half-formed ruminations from a life learning (slowly, stubbornly) what freedom actually feels like.

Each entry stands on its own. Brief. Unstructured. Personal. It’s meant to be felt more than analyzed. Wandered through, not worked through.

It’s not written from a podium. It breathes from the floor.

It’s an invitation to notice where freedom might already be breaking in—often through unexpected entrances.

Releasing in June.

You can pre-order yours today. Link in bio.
#newbook #diary #comingsoon #grace #freedom by @tulliantch

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8 months ago

In a season of self-destruction back in 2015, I lost everything. I hurt people who loved me, shattered the trust of those who looked up to me, and broke my own family. At 41 years old, I wrecked my life.

The night my granddad, Billy Graham, died seven years ago, I sat in the weight of it all—his legacy, my failure, the vast gap between the two. Through heaving sobs of shame and regret, I sent a message to a friend:

“Watching the world celebrate my grandfather’s life, it has hit me afresh just how selfish I was, how much I squandered. And for what? FOR WHAT?? What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul? Character matters. It doesn’t earn us God’s favor, but it gives us credibility to deliver God’s favor to the world. I blew it. I’m undone.”

His response was just six words:

“There was a man named David…”

I lost it.

It was exactly what I needed to hear. A reminder that God loves and uses failures—because failures are all He has to work with.

Maybe you need that reminder too.

#grace #forgiveness #brokenness #regret #billygraham #God #unconditionallove by @tulliantch

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2 years ago

Discovery shouldn’t have an expiration date…
#deeppurple #aging #discovery by @tulliantch

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3 hours ago

June 13, 1992. David Gilmour joins Tom Jones on The Right Time for a performance of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”

I’ve watched this 50 times. Chills every time.

I’ve been listening to “Purple Rain” since I was a teenager. Loved it then. Love it now. Never gets old. But there’s something about hearing Gilmour (my favorite guitarist) play it that makes me hear it differently.

Prince and Gilmour. Two of the most distinctive guitarists in rock history. Two completely different musical styles. Two unmistakable forms of expression.

I love that even the things we know so well can still surprise us.

Familiarity doesn’t mean we’ve exhausted all the layers. There’s always another angle. Another dimension. Another color. And the best artists have a way of bringing those hidden things to the surface.

Turns out, there’s still plenty to discover in things we thought we knew by heart.

And…I love that. 🤘🏼

#DavidGilmour #Prince #PurpleRain #TomJones #PinkFloyd by @tulliantch

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a day ago

When a 19-year-old freshly discovers a band that’s been around for 50 years, nobody thinks twice about it. They’re even complimented. “You’re such an old soul.”

But when a 54-year-old freshly discovers Deep Purple, for example, and can’t stop listening, people ask questions.

“Since when do you like Deep Purple?” “You never listened to them before.”

As if discovering something in the middle of life requires a defense. An explanation.

It’s weird.

Why do we spend the first half of our lives discovering who we are and what we like and then spend the second half defending what we’ve discovered?

Why do we stop exploring and start repeating?

Why should discovery have an expiration date?

When I was younger, I moved through different worlds. Musical worlds. Literary worlds. Cultural worlds. I knew the names, recognized the landmarks, but passed through without always stopping to explore.

Now, decades later, I’m drawn back.

Bands I knew about but never really listened to. Books I never opened. Ideas I never considered. I’m now discovering things I never knew I was missing.

My kids have spent the last 18 months poking fun at my seemingly new obsession with Pink Floyd.

I keep reminding them that I was listening to Pink Floyd long before they were born. I’ve known their music for decades. I’ve always liked them.

But they’re right about one thing. Something has changed. The music hits me differently now.

I’ve lived more life. Experienced more loss. Suffered more failures. Things I heard when I was younger now reach me in ways they couldn’t reach back then.

The music hasn’t changed. I have.

Sometimes we’re not discovering something for the first time. We’re discovering it for the first time as the people we’ve become. We’re discovering old things in a new way.

The world doesn’t have to shrink as we get older. It can expand.

I don’t want the rest of my life to be an endless rehearsal of everything I’ve already discovered.

Age tells us how long we’ve been here. Not how much there is left to discover.

We only start to die when we stop discovering.

#DeepPurple #PinkFloyd #Discovery by @tulliantch

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2 days ago

You’re never too old to become freshly fascinated with something. #PinkFloyd #discovery by @tulliantch

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3 days ago

I’ve spent most of my adult life talking and writing about grace. And I have no intention of stopping.

But the older I get, the more interested I become in what grace actually frees us to experience.

Because that’s what grace does. It frees. It changes our experience of being alive.

A lot of time in religious circles is spent defining grace. Defending it. Debating it.

And that matters.

But sometimes I wonder if we’re so busy talking about grace that we fail to experience the freedom it produces.

What does freedom feel like?

What does it look like on an ordinary Tuesday? In our relationships? Our memories? Our contradictions? In the things we’re discovering about ourselves and the world?

When Jesus said, “It is finished,” he wasn’t simply giving us something to believe. He was announcing something that substantially changes the way life feels.

Because if I no longer have to earn God’s love, secure my identity, prove my worth, or justify my existence, then an enormous amount of pressure has been lifted off my life.

And that freedom creates room for things.

Room for curiosity. Room for beauty. Room for discovery. Room to try something new and fail. Room for experiences that don’t have to accomplish anything or take me anywhere.

This is partly why I talk so much about music, art, and the things that move me. Some wonder what any of that has to do with grace.

My answer? Everything.

My enjoyment of music, my fascination with artists, my curiosity about the world, my freedom to explore new interests and discover new things about myself aren’t distractions from grace.

They’re some of the very fruits of believing it.

Grace has freed me to enjoy things simply because they’re enjoyable. To appreciate beauty and artistry without needing to extract a spiritual lesson from them. I don’t need every interest to serve some larger purpose.

I can simply be alive to what’s in front of me.

I’m not interested in talking less about grace. I’m interested in discovering more of what grace has opened my eyes to see and freed me to experience.

And the more I discover, the more convinced I become that I’ve barely scratched the surface. #grace #freedom by @tulliantch

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6 days ago

Two of the greatest bands in rock history. Two unforgettable final performances.

Led Zeppelin at the O2 in 2007. Pink Floyd at Live 8 in 2005.

No sprawling farewell tours. No endless victory laps. Just one night. One last reminder of why they mattered so much in the first place.

There’s something deeply respectable about that. Knowing what you’ve accomplished. Knowing what you’ve meant to people. And not feeling the need to keep proving it.

They didn’t try to recreate the past indefinitely. They gave us one more glimpse of the magic and left it there.

In the end, neither band needed a long goodbye to cement their legendary status. They preserved their mystique by knowing when to leave the stage.

Their restraint became part of their legend.

Respect 🤘🏼

#ledzeppelin #pinkfloyd by @tulliantch

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7 days ago

Poetic Outlaws posted this earlier this week:

“I don’t want books written by AI. I want books written by alcoholic Russian novelists on the brink of a mental collapse from depression, that’s how God wanted it.”

I laughed out loud. And then I thought about it. Me too.

I don’t want art to be perfect. I want to feel the person in it. The reality. The edginess of being human.

The confusion. The obsession. The tension. The ache. The weirdness. The stuff that probably should’ve been edited out but somehow makes the whole thing better.

I like the edges rough and the ends loose. I like things that don’t quite resolve. Things that leave a little splinter in you.

Give me the guitarist who has to play because it’s one of the only ways he knows how to breathe.

Give me the singer who isn’t just singing a song but trying to survive something through it.

Give me the writer who is trying to figure something out on the page rather than explaining something they’ve already figured out.

I think that’s why the art that stays with us is rarely clean.

It has human fingerprints all over it. It carries something of the person who made it. Their history. Their wounds. Their humor. Their darkness. Their longing. Their desires.

And somehow, through what they create, we encounter them. And in encountering them, we encounter something in ourselves. Something about their humanness resonates with something about ours.

Their ache finds ours. Their longing recognizes ours. Their need to feel reminds us that we need to feel too.

That’s why certain songs and books and paintings do more than entertain us. We recognize something of ourselves in someone else’s humanness.

We’re not just entertained.

We’re represented.

I’m drawn to art that carries the stuff of being human…curiosity, age, limitation, contradiction, discovery, and truthfulness.

Give me more of that.

Less polish. More skin. More blood.

#ArtAndHumanity #CreativeLife #HumanExperience #LessPolishMoreBlood by @tulliantch

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9 days ago

I just read a quote from the inimitable Sting. He said, “Music is its own reward.”

I agree.

I think we have a tendency to need everything to mean something. Everything has to teach us something, improve us somehow, take us somewhere.

Music doesn’t.

Sometimes you hear a song and it just hits you. You don’t know why. You don’t need to know why.

A sound. A voice. A guitar part. A lyric you’ve heard a hundred times that you suddenly hear differently.

Nothing has been solved. You’re not a better person. You’re not further along in reaching your goals. But for four minutes, something happened.

I’m realizing more and more that some of the best things in life don’t need to justify their existence. They don’t need a lesson attached.

They just deepen or beautify a moment…for a moment. That’s it. And that’s the point.

“Music is its own reward.”

Yeah. I get that.
#sting #music by @tulliantch

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10 days ago

I showed this clip at The Sanctuary this morning.

It’s Robert Plant performing “Ramble On” with Saving Grace on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on April 8, 2026.

I used it because this morning I was talking about discovery.

When we’re young, discovery is normal. We’re constantly finding new music, new ideas, new interests, new parts of ourselves.

But somewhere along the way, the things we discover about ourselves can harden into definitions.

This is who I am. This is what I like. This is what I do. This is my music.
This is my style.

We spend the first half of our lives discovering ourselves and can spend the second half defending what we discovered.

Robert Plant fascinates me because he seems almost completely uninterested in doing that.

He could have spent the last 40 years trying to recreate Led Zeppelin. Instead, he keeps wandering. Bluegrass. Americana. Folk. African music. Strange collaborations. New bands. New sounds.

Even when he returns to an old song like “Ramble On,” he doesn’t try to make it sound like 1969.

He lets it become something else.

And that’s what I love most about this performance.

It sounds like a man who honors where he’s been without feeling obligated to stay there.

At 54, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life simply repeating the person I’ve already discovered.

There are parts of me I couldn’t have discovered at 34 because I hadn’t lived enough yet.

And I hope there are parts of me at 64 that I can’t discover yet either.

I want to remain discoverable to myself.

Because discovering more of who we are is one of the ways we keep discovering more of God.

Keep rambling on.

#RobertPlant #RambleOn #SavingGrace #Discovery #TheSanctuary by @tulliantch

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