For many, the year 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered for the nightmare that was Covid-19. For me, this year is etched into my memory for different reasons. This was the year of my rebirth. The year I got born again, a second time.
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It all unfolded in a short space of time like the opening scenes of a movie where, having watched our main characters living out their everyday lives and getting a sense of their norm, we are hit with the inevitable plot twist — that extraordinary event or confluence of events that thrusts our protagonists into the unknown, forcing them to look beyond their normal means, and setting the stage for their story to be told.
The first of these events in my own story was a conversation with my wife in early 2020. As a couple, we had fought hard to make it work over our ten years of marriage, even coming through a period of separation. But something in the resolve and finality of her words, when she asked me for a divorce that day, meant that the blow landed harder this time. And in that moment I had no concept of the beautiful journey that would result from this decision — so painfully out of my hands. All I knew was that it was painful and that it was out of my hands.
Meanwhile, a second plot twist was on the horizon as news began to reach us of a strange pathogen emerging from China. The early reports gave us little to worry about, since it all seemed so far away. But soon Covid-19 — or the Coronavirus as we called it then — was on our doorstep, with pockets of infection breaking out across Europe. And, within just a few short weeks of that divorce conversation, our government had announced a nationwide mandatory lockdown.
And so, sleeping in separate beds, and living largely on opposite ends of our tenement apartment, my estranged wife and I — along with our ten-year-old son — hunkered down for the next few months and adapted to an altogether new way of life.
This really did feel like a movie: a dystopian tale set in modern day Glasgow, with a tinge of dark humour. We quarantined from the rest of humanity; scrubbed our hands with industrial-strength soap; took socially distanced, government sanctioned walks for exercise; carried out our work and social lives over Zoom; and scrambled from one store to another to find the last remaining stocks of toilet paper in the universe.
My evenings were spent renovating our apartment — stripping back Victorian wooden panels and architectural mouldings, ready for repainting. I too felt like I was being stripped back. Like all the layers of things I had built up around me were being removed. My heart was full of grief and questions.
I started talking to God again and looking to Him for answers, since my own self felt bereft of them. These were the kinds of conversations I’d had with Him in my late twenties, at a time when He’d led me out of depression and a pack-a-day addiction to Camel Blue. But somehow, since then, we’d lost touch — perhaps as I’d lost myself in the mire of my marriage. Maybe not lost touch altogether, as I still knew who to run to when things went sideways. But certainly we’d lost something of that special connection and daily discourse. The type of friendship that was beginning to reawaken now.
Over the weeks these conversations became increasingly bidirectional. I was wailing less and listening more. I felt a strong familiar hand begin to rest on my shoulder and a joy — also familiar yet completely contrary to my situation — begin to visit me once again. Like being reunited with an old friend and picking up exactly where you left off.
The month of May came quickly and, with my stepson moving abroad to be with his paternal father, my wife and I agreed it was time for one of us to move out. It took me less than two hours to find the closest Airbnb, just a few doors down our street, and to convince the owner to rent it to me monthly, since Covid was still in full swing and no holidaymakers would be booking anytime soon.
This was the apartment womb, as my Brazilian friend later dubbed it. A fitting title for the tiny magnolia box that would host me for almost exactly forty weeks. I didn’t plan to be there for the equivalent of a gestation period; nor even realised the timing of it until about a year after moving out. But that’s exactly what it was: a nine-month season of rebirth which, thanks to Covid, was spent largely tucked away in a small, warm and cosy cocoon on the eastern border of Glasgow’s West End.
I have many stories to tell of my season in this place. Life-changing stories of encounter and adventure with a living God; conversations that turned my world upside down and reshaped my thinking, setting me on a whole new trajectory. And I intend to tell some of those stories in the following chapters. But first, I wanted to set the scene for where they took place and how I got there. How God, in His love and profound nature, made Himself known in one of my darkest moments and put me there to be reborn.
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Jesus once had a conversation with one of the religious leaders of His day. A respected man named Nicodemus. He told Nick that in order to see the things of God he must be born again, a second time. Nick responded as most of us probably would, with utter confusion:
“How can a man re-enter his mother’s womb?”
Jesus replied by pointing him to a different kind of birth and a new and perfect Mother:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” — John 3:5-6 ESV
wondering son 