Pass Me the Tablespoon

Editor’s Note: Readers may point to some of Ellen G. White’s writings counseling against interracial marriage written when racial prejudice and segregation severely affected everyday life, including marriage and family relationships.

It is important to read these statements in their historical context. Ellen White’s counsel was not based on a belief in racial inequality. In the same passage of Selected Messages, book 2, she affirmed that all people are “free and equal” and that “we are one brotherhood” (p. 343).

As with all historical counsel, we should consider both the principle being addressed and the circumstances in which it was given.

***

“Hey, babe, would you pass me the tablespoon?”

“The tablespoon?”

“Yes, that one over there.”

“Honey, that’s a big spoon. A tablespoon is what you use for measuring.”

“What? No, that’s a tablespoon. ‘Big spoon.’ Such American simplicity.”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot we’re using ‘the King’s English’ now!”

So the argument begins.

Welcome to an intercultural relationship.

Our differences are usually much more consequential than banter over spoons, of course. Sixty years ago one of those differences could have made our marriage illegal.

Callie is a White American woman. I’m a Black man born in Kenya. We grew up thousands of miles apart, on different continents, and had we lived in our current home state of Virginia, United States, before 1967, our marriage would have been against the law. It took the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia to strike down state bans on interracial marriage and establish the legal right to marry across racial lines throughout the United States.

Thankfully, many of the legal and social barriers to intercultural relationships are gone. Still, 11 years together and seven years of marriage have taught us that being free to marry someone from another culture does not mean the intercultural challenges between you disappear.

When Callie and I were dating, people who loved us occasionally asked some version of the same question: Are you really sure? You come from different countries. Marriage is hard already. Why make it more difficult with such a cultural divide?

To be fair, they had a point.

We were hopeful about our relationship and grateful that God had made our paths cross. We had plenty in common, from the books we liked to our love of Korean food (bibimbap is still the meal we eat most at home), to our passion for youth and young adult ministry. But before long we realized that some of our cultural differences were no longer adorable. They could be confusing and, at times, heartbreaking.

We certainly haven’t mastered intercultural marriage. But looking back, three major lessons have emerged.

Be Curious Before You Judge

One of the first things our relationship taught me is how easy it is to confuse cultural difference with right versus wrong. Most of us don’t realize how culturally shaped we are and how our way of doing things feels like the way. . . until we clash with someone else’s.

Our first big conflict was about courtship practices.

After two years of dating, Callie and I felt ready to get married. In her culture, that made sense. I met her family less than a month into becoming exclusive, spent Thanksgivings and Christmases with them, and even went on vacation with them. Honestly, that was uncomfortable for me at first. Being that close to her family that fast felt like a lot of pressure. Where I come from, that kind of closeness comes much later. But in her culture, the boyfriend gradually becomes “part of the family” even prior to marriage.

Most of us don’t realize how culturally shaped we are and how our way of doing things feels like the way.

My culture, on the other hand, has more rigid boundaries around family integration. Two years in, Callie was, to my family, still more of a “special friend” than a girlfriend. Callie lived in America the whole time we dated, while I split my years between there and Kenya, where my parents live. That meant she was an ocean away from my family whenever she wasn’t visiting. Weddings, church, and family gatherings were the few places it was appropriate for Callie to be with my family. She had far fewer chances to be with them than I’d had with hers, and her status in my family was never the same as mine in hers.

We both felt the difference, but it particularly pained Callie. Friends would inquire when I was going to propose, and she had no good answer. From where she stood, I seemed ready to marry her but wouldn’t bring her fully into my life. She wondered if I was noncommittal, or worse, ashamed to introduce her to my family. We had hard conversations about it. I wasn’t ashamed. I was waiting for the right setting based on the way I was raised. I struggled to see how that looked to her, and she struggled to see what the waiting meant to me. For a while we felt as if we weren’t on the same page at all.

Callie kept showing up anyway. She traveled to Kenya several times and attended family weddings and larger gatherings. She learned that when I said I had a big family, I meant more than 40 cousins. Before one wedding, she studied a slideshow I’d made of pictures and names of uncles, aunts, and cousins so she’d know who everyone was.

Even after we got engaged three years in, we couldn’t just plan a wedding. In addition to planning two weddings, one in the United States and one in Nairobi, my whole family had to travel from Kenya to Maryland for the formal family introduction, what we call ekeragerio in my tribe: That’s where the two families meet, the dowry is negotiated, and the couple receives the blessing to move forward. This extended the total wedding planning time by another six months.

Curiosity and grace got us through. Curiosity created closeness, and closeness made empathy easier. Neither timeline was the correct one. The Bible doesn’t give a timeline for how fast a couple should be folded into each other’s families. We were both trying to date in a way that honored God, and we still hurt each other because we expected different things culturally and didn’t know it.

So we had to get curious instead of judging. When Callie did something that didn’t make sense to me, my first thought used to be That’s a tablespoon, not a big spoon. Now it’s more like Interesting; I wonder why she calls it that? Different from me doesn’t mean less than me. It usually means there’s something I haven’t learned yet.

Create a Third Culture

Understanding why someone sees the world differently is important, but it doesn’t make the differences disappear. Eventually you still have to decide what to do. Sabbath became one of those places for us while we lived in Kenya.

Sabbaths in Kenya are an extrovert’s dream. It’s an all-day affair: Sabbath School, church, potluck, afternoon programs and visitation, conversations in the parking lot afterward, maybe dinner and dawa (a traditional hot lemon and ginger drink) in the evening. I could put on my church clothes in the morning and happily stay in them until the day was nearly over.

Callie is an introvert. She has strong social skills and can often pass as an extrovert, but her social battery runs out fast, especially in a new cultural environment. In her version of American Adventist culture, Sabbath often means going home after church or potluck, changing clothes, going for a hike, napping, or spending time with family, with maybe an occasional afternoon program.

We both valued Sabbath. But we quickly learned that Callie was socially spent by the time potluck was over, while I was looking forward to her joining me for several more hours of programs. That caused real tension in our first year of marriage.

Marriage isn’t piecing two cultures together. You are creating a third one together.

We eventually agreed that some Sabbaths she came for part of the day. Some Sabbaths I went without her. When Callie wasn’t at a church program, people would say, “Where’s your beloved wife? In the first year of marriage you shouldn’t be seen apart!” I understood why they asked, and it stung. But honoring my wife mattered more to me than how it looked.

There was no perfect formula, and we never sat down and announced we were creating a “third culture.” It happened gradually, and only later did I realize that that was what we were doing. Nowadays we have a rhythm in which some Sabbaths are slow, quiet ones with a nap or walking the dog in our neighborhood, and some are full ones with company over or an all-day speaking engagement at a church. I used to think in terms of compromise: how much of my way, how much of hers, and where we meet in the middle. But marriage isn’t piecing two cultures together. You are creating a third one together.

Different Cultures, One Purpose

Almost every year since we’ve been married, one major cultural difference comes up, and we clash. There’s frustration and often tears. We have to sit down, talk it through, pray about it, and work out a compromise again and again.

What I value most about our journey is that what brought us together is a lot of what keeps us together. We both love ministry and young people. I work as a therapist, and Callie teaches high school Bible. Our skills complement each other, and we’ve had the privilege of starting a podcast and teaching at mission schools and youth conferences, sharing relationship principles from our own journey. Day to day we also walk alongside high schoolers through relationship struggles, questions of identity, and mental health. I approach things one way, and she approaches them another, and we’ve learned the work is better for having both.

Our faith is what holds that together. Shared values give us a common center, and we agree on what marriage is for, even when it took time to work out what living those values looks like. Jesus and His kingdom have their own culture. It doesn’t erase our Kenyan or American ones. It redeems them and lets them grow side by side. We believe that God put us together for a purpose and that we can do more together than apart.

That changes how we treat our differences. We don’t see the cultural friction as a hindrance. We see it as a doorway to deeper understanding and unity.

Looking back, I understand those early questions better now: Are you sure? Different countries? Different cultures? Our differences have made our marriage harder at times, and there is real grief and loss tied to them. They have also been a blessing. I no longer see them as a problem to solve, because unity doesn’t require sameness. For us, God has used the work of navigating our cultural differences to show us, in real time, “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Eph. 3:18, NIV).