Most of us, thank goodness, have long since graduated from getting report cards. While I got good marks, a recurring comment from grade-school teachers was “Tim doesn’t listen well to instructions.” (Maybe that’s still not a strong point for me.) I didn’t stress too much about my grades, even in high school, but I’m becoming more aware of how much I still worry about expectations. I’ve traded letter grades for more creative ways to get anxious.

For this edition, I’m veering a bit from my normal content to share some updates.

A Reading in Nashville

I read to a sold-out crowd recently at a Nashville “Tales at the Table,” a collaboration between the Rabbit Room and WriterFestNashville. I joined singer-songwriters, a screenwriter, and a novelist for the light program. What a joy to read from my just published essay on the importance of community for writers and other creative types. J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis figured significantly in what I said, as did John Hendrix’s graphic novel The Mythmakers.

A photo from the evening appears above.

I began noticing yard signs popping up where I lived some years ago, and I got curious. They were blazoned not with political slogans or candidate names, but positive messages. Driving along, navigating rude drivers and red lights, I’d read, “You matter.” “Don’t give up.” “You are not alone.”

I soon learned that a mental health agency in town conceived the campaign to support people in a tough spot. We all face gloomy days, and who knows? maybe a drive-by reminder might help.

But one sign left me with mixed feelings: “You are enough.” Mixed feelings because, on the one hand, …

It’s hard to write about something so big—something so cosmic. But what I’m trying to tackle today, while immense, is full of everyday significance.

It helps that what I refer to begins in a story, that it is grounded in events that one can recount and tell. So this thing happened—back then, but also, I’m discovering, helps us see how we have with us and within us more than we expected. It helps, too, that the stakes are high, the promise tantalizing: a story of how a dark day opened onto a breathtaking future.

For a few years Jill and I hosted an annual Valentine’s dinner party in our home—an elegant (at least by our standards) affair. We invited folks from different settings and walks of life. Our guest list would mix coworkers, neighbors, parents from our kids’ school, church members—most of whom had never met before.

After the meal we’d convene to the living room where we led a parlor game, a way for us to get to know one another better. We found one icebreaker particularly revealing: “Three truths and a lie.”

Here’s the idea: You think up four things about yourself: three true, one false. There’s a bit of a strategy, too: You dig deep into your life for the most bonkers or bizarre experience. The factual thing should be as hard-to-believe as possible, even outlandish, while you make the lie pretty prosaic or normal—just not true. You want a challenging game of guessing.

Once I said, for example, that the house I grew up in California was a block down from Jane Fonda.

True—or not?

I turned in my book manuscript to my publishing house a couple of weeks ago. The book’s title communicates something I’ve been discovering and care deeply about: That I am, that all God’s children are, Fully Beloved. And because I know such an affirmation can seem glib or disengaged from real life, I wanted the subtitle to stress how that conviction lives right in the thick of our broken and sometimes scary world. So my editor and I came up with this: Meeting God in Our Heartaches and Our Hopes. What those lines of title and subtitle communicate seem all the more important and dramatic during these current few days, called by many Christians Holy Week.