Travel back to September 1998. I had just moved out of home for the first time, into student accomodation at Cardiff Uni. Flat L2, 120 Colum Road. Everyone was talking about the coming Millenium. Cher was in the charts. And I was starting a new season of life - independence, university, freedom.
Being terribly shy, I spent most of my time in my room, only venturing to the kitchen shared with the other 5 girls in flat L when I really had to. They however were much more sociable, and it wasn’t long before the boys from flat N on the floor above us were camped out in the kitchen for hours at a time. They were John, Jon, John, Kimmo, Darren and Steve.
Sad to say, I don’t remember the first time I saw him. But I do remember that it wasn’t long before I was venturing to the kitchen a little more often than before, and ever so slightly disappointed if on hearing male voices it turned out one of them wasn’t his. When he was there, I needed an excuse to stay in the kitchen a little longer - so I began to sit playing card games at the kitchen table. Eventually someone asked to play a game with me. And so I taught them all the card games I knew (most of them with rules made up by my dad whenever he didn’t know what the real rules were). And because we were students and no-one was really bothered about going to bed - we would sit up late playing cards for hours on end. One by one the others would drift off to bed, till there was just me and Steve sat in the kitchen, pretending that we weren’t waiting for everyone else to leave.
I knew it was serious for me when I started baking ‘revision snacks’ and taking them up to Flat N where the “Business and Accounting” lot were doing their work.
So by Christmas I knew I was totally hooked. But there was a snag. I was a Christian. He wasn’t. I’d had a relationship with a non-Christian before - back in 1996, lower 6th form. And I’d learnt the hard way that it wasn’t a good idea. So what should I do about Steve? To be honest it was a great inconvenience that I had this crush on him. Why couldn’t I find a nice Christian boy to fantasize about? I prayed to God that I would stop thinking about Steve and asked if he couldn't send someone else to take his place really really quickly.
So I openly told him I was a Christian, and, in conversations in his presence, declared that I would never have a relationship with a non-Christian - just so he’d be under no misunderstanding that I had anything other than friendship on my mind. We’d continue to talk and play cards till 3am sometimes; and we’d flirt over email during the day. But it was going nowhere - of course. At some point in the Spring, I don’t remember when, we stayed up extra late. And he told me he liked me. And I said I liked him. But I was adamant we couldn't have a relationship, because he wasn’t a Christian. I don’t think he understood my reasoning. But he was a gentleman and didn’t push it.
At the end of the first year he went back to his parents' house in the Rhondda Valley and I went back to my parents', down the road in Whitchurch. We wrote to each other, every couple of days. We had arranged to share a flat in the second year with Jon and Nieves, so of course we had to be in touch to make arrangements - at least, that's what we told ourselves. 34 Woodville Rd was a 2 floor flat above a restaurant. I moved in as soon as I could, desperate to get away from my parents, and Steve came to visit me and begin to move his own stuff in.
It was my best friend Ruth who inspired me. She was president of the CU at her Uni, and she kept giving away Bibles to all her flat mates and friends from her course. So I thought - why not?! He knew how I felt - was it worth trying? So for his birthday in September - we’d known each other nearly a year - I gave him 2 presents. One - in front of our other friends - a copy of Mr Happy. The other - in private - a Bible. I can’t remember if he really did go white on opening it, or if that’s just my imagination... He was just about to get on his train to go home for the weekend, so he was able to escape me pretty quickly. That was a tense two days - wondering what his reaction was, what he would be like when he came back to the flat on Sunday night. Did he think I was a total Bible-basher?! Was he completely freaked out?!
I guess you’d have to ask him yourself what was going through his mind that weekend. But when he did come back on the Sunday he had decided to read it. I’m pretty certain he just wanted to keep me happy in case he could win me round some day. But I took it as the first step on a journey. From that point on I bought him every book I could find - some of the first books were “Dead Sure” by J. John, “Mere Christianity” by C.S.Lewis and “Who Moved the Stone” by some bloke whose name I always forget. I would take him to any and every Christian event I could find - whether a visiting speaker at the uni CU, or a Christian band at a church in Cardiff somewhere - if we could get there then we went. We would talk lots, and I did my best to tell him as much as I knew about God. Whenever we would talk about God he would always end the conversation by saying ‘don’t get your hopes up, I’m not a Christian’. And I would just smile.
And I prayed. Daily. Hourly if I could! I agonized and poured out my heart before God. I told God, even if we could never be a couple, I just had to know that Steve was safe, that he was saved and heading for heaven. I prayed with a fervour I had never previously known.
To give him his credit, Steve read every book I gave him, and agreed to come to the Christian meetings. We also found a church we could go to on Sunday evenings when he got back from his parents’. While at first it was just to keep me sweet - suddenly he was going to the theology section in the library and getting hold of his own books. Wanting to be absolutely unbiased he would get books on all sorts of idealogies - communism, islam, humanism, atheism, hinduism - he read about them all. But he kept being drawn back to Christianity, and to the Bible - and not just because I kept pulling him that way!
As the year progressed he grew closer to God, and we grew closer together. We were still officially ‘just friends’ - but the only people we were fooling were ourselves. On Valentines day we had our first proper date. Then we started playing badminton together once a week - which gave us chance to sit on the bus and hold hands while no-one who knew us could see! By the end of the second year, we finally gave in and became ‘a couple’. We planned a holiday together in Paignton over the summer - and on that holiday was the first time we prayed together.
Coming back to Cardiff we moved out of Woodville Rd and found separate places to live. By this time Steve was as good as got by God, he was just resisting taking the final step! I can’t tell you when it was in that final year of uni that Steve became a Christian, which is strange. I think he had been so close for so long, that he kind of slipped across the line without my noticing. But when I did finally realise, it was like a party in my mind. I couldn’t stop rejoicing and giving thanks.
So that’s the story of me and Steve. At the end of the final year he got a job in Swindon, we moved to England, he proposed, we married - and here we are, seven years later, still happy, still in love. He was and is my God-sent gift.
Happy 30th Birthday Steve. x
