I haven’t told my husband about the bris yet. I’m not sure how to bring it up. “Um, honey, all our family and friends are going to gather around and watch as a strange Jewish man chops off a piece of our future son’s penis.”

No, I don’t think that’ll go over well.

My husband, Morning, is Buddhist. I spent my childhood attending weekly Hebrew school classes and saying the Sh’ma every night: “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

My husband worships idols.

We met in Rangoon, where he grew up, while we were both working at the Myanmar Times newspaper. We lived together in Burma and again in Thailand, two predominantly Buddhist countries.

We spent vacations traveling, and in every place we went, we would visit a different pagoda or temple. We would take off our shoes at the entrance and then circle around the pagoda in the traditional clockwise fashion. We would admire the ornate Buddha statues decorated with gold and gems. In Inle Lake, Morning bought gold leaves to add to four Buddha statues and receive merit.

After circling the pagoda, we would enter it, and Morning would kneel in front of the collection of Buddha statues and pray.

I would stand in the back. I was there to admire and support, but I wasn’t about to get down and pray. I was a Jewish tourist, not a participant.

Now, we are married and living in Los Angeles. We’re no longer tourists visiting sites. We’re settled, more or less. We have a Costco membership and Los Feliz library cards. And now, we have to figure out how to bring two beautiful yet different religions together in one apartment.

Multiculturalism sounds magical and exciting, a picture-perfect example of what is wonderful about globalization.

Our wedding was just that. We had a melange of different Burmese and Jewish traditions— including a Rabbi, challah and horah, and Burmese tealeaf salad, harpist, and traditional dancer. Morning stomped on the glass while wearing a longyi, or Burmese sarong.

But after the wedding comes life, when things get a little trickier.

A Buddha statue sits on the top shelf of our bookcase. Two candles rest on either side. At nighttime we light the candles and the statue glows.

Morning says the statue has not been consecrated. Once it has gone through the consecration ceremony, you are supposed to care for it by offering water and food. So right now, technically, it is not really Buddha.

Try explaining that to my family. I can only imagine my 82-year-old grandfather— who wasn’t exactly supportive of the idea of me marrying a non-Jew in the first place— visiting his granddaughter’s home and finding a shrine.

So much for the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

Then there is the children predicament. We plan on raising them both Jewish and Buddhist. Judaism to me is about my family and the traditions and lessons. There is no reason our children can’t grow up learning the rituals of both Burmese Buddhists and American Jews. They can eat gefilte fish on Passover and then have water fights on Thingyan, the Burmese New Year.

But I know it won’t all be that easy.

It is one thing for me to watch Morning kneel in front of Buddhas and pray. That is his religion, and I respect it. But what happens when we take our children on visits to Southeast Asia or even to temples in the States? Is Morning going to teach them how to kneel down and pray to statues? And if he does, how am I going to feel watching my children pray to idols? Or at least what I consider idols.

Just as I draw a line between being an observer and a participant in some Buddhist rituals, Morning does the same with Judaism. He does not wear a yarmalka at ceremonies. To me, a yarmalka is just a head covering and non-Jews often wear them as well to show respect. To Morning, it symbolizes being Jewish and by not wearing one, he is saying that he is different. What happens, though, if we have a son? If we make it past the bris ceremony, will our son grow up wearing a yarmalka at synagogue? At his own Bar Mitzvah? And if so, how will Morning feel?

In other ways, I think having children will make being in an inter-faith marriage easier. Morning can take the children with him to visit the monastery. And I won’t have to go to synagogue by myself because I can bring the kids. During Rosh Hashana last week, I went to the USC Hillel alone. It was filled with mostly undergraduates. And though it was interesting to talk to freshmen during the meal about sorority life, I felt very alone during the services.

Of course, sharing a religion would not make marriage easy. There are many people who within the same religion face great gaps in observance. When my grandmother married my grandfather, who was raised Orthodox, she did not know what keeping Kosher really meant. She didn’t know you couldn’t bring in Lobster Cantonese on paper plates. “Marriage at best is not easy, that’s for sure,” she told me.

No matter what, marriage is hard. Despite the lure of multiculturalism, the reality of sharing different cultures and values is complicated. In marriage, whether you are dealing with religion or other identity-shaping beliefs and practices, you have the common ground, and you have all the ways in which you are different.

Morning and I don’t know what our children will think of being Jewish and Buddhist, or of being American and Burmese. We need to learn more about each other’s culture so we can understand the ways in which they overlap, and in which they diverge.

We do know we’re willing to take on the challenge.

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Hanna Ingber Win is a staff writer and editor. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twenty-something land. Contact her at: hingber@gmail.com