From Outside the Box
previously published in January 2005
The October edition of Oprah’s magazine recently stated that, in general, people try to find a mate who is exactly like them. That is, they look like them, they live like them, eat like them, even have similar flaws. I don’t know what happened to me, but that is defiantly not what happened in my case. After all, I am the only Caucasian, married to a Korean pastor, attending a Korean church, with two mixed race daughters that I know.
Maybe I was born with it in me, to be different, that is. My mother thrives on her “differences.” She tells everyone she knows that she plays Accordion, not “boring” piano. And she loves having people over to her house and showing them all her odd collections. My grandfather is the same way. He is not “Seventh-day Adventist,” although he believes in all 27 fundamental doctrines. He is a “Seventh-day Baptist,” with Adventist influenced theology. And don’t ask him if his heritage is German. He is “Plautdietsch,” descended from a small group of Mennonites who lived in the Ukraine, 200 years removed from Germany, and speaking an unwritten dialect of German. I was always raised with the strong belief that your differences make you special. And so, as a senior in high school, I met someone more different from all the other guys I’d ever known, and I fell in love.
When my husband and I first started dating, I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I don’t believe my husband did either. I had a huge set of expectations about what boyfriends do and don’t do. And somehow, my husband seemed to break them all. I can remember the hours and hours we spent talking, arguing, and talking some more about all these things. During the first two years we dated, we broke up three times. My parents would always say things like “maybe you guys are too different” or “you know there are other fish in the sea,” but each time we would break up, I would step out of all the drama, and see my husband for the man he is, a man that I really loved.
The advice I would give to anyone dating outside their cultural comfort zone is simple. First, take all your expectations, and throw them out the window. I don’t mean values. The more I got to know my husband, the more I knew that we shared the same core values. But those values get disguised in all sorts of cultural behaviors that are unintelligible to others. But the little expectations can kill. For example, the first time I brought my husband to my house, he took it so seriously! He was shocked at how “fast” the relationship was moving since I was introducing him to my parents so soon. As far as I was concerned, he was just coming over, and we weren’t even officially dating. I mean, we were in high school right? If we hadn’t talked out the situation right away, it could have caused some major misunderstandings.
Second, I would tell you to find out what you really have, and if it’s what you want, be persistent. What are those core values that you share, or don’t share? The more I found out about who my husband was, the more I loved him. It took at least two or three years for me to really “get” everything about him, (and by the way, I’m still learning), but right away, I knew his passion for ministry, his commitment to family, his talents and willingness to use them with enthusiasm. I wanted my husband to possess these qualities, and neither of us were willing to let the drama (which there was for a while) get to us.
Finally, use the power of God. Find strength and common ground in Him. And pray together! I can’t tell you enough, how well prayer works when you use it to strengthen a relationship.
I have known my husband for more than eleven years now, and what’s amazing to me is that I am still learning so much about what it means to be Korean. I count that as a tremendous blessing. Marrying Richard has meant that I now have a whole new world to discover! It is fun to raise my daughters (very beautiful by the way in my “unbiased” opinion), and learn with them, of the heritage that has come before them and brought them into the world. I have become an eternal student, and the subject is my family. And yes, maybe most people do choose to marry someone more like them, but there are those of us who find that it is worth the challenges of marrying outside the box to experience the joy of another “box.” I know in my case, it has become something that I wholeheartedly embrace.