Axel and Carly Van Cleve on Marriage Abroad, Uganda and Mental Health

Episode 33 is live and it was recorded in Kampala, Uganda. Carly and Axel were our hosts while we traveled abroad and were the most gracious, kind, welcoming hosts we could have asked for. Home cooked and delicious (hand made flour tortillas one night I might add) meals and made with love desserts, the self-sacrificial offering of a mosquito net, and teaching us an array of new games (Monopoly Deal is where it’s at) are just a few they made our first trip to Uganda feel that much more like home!

Carly and Axel are newlyweds having just celebrated their first year of marriage in June. They have experienced some pretty big life changes within this first year of marriage, from moving across country to start an internship that has since taken them abroad, to working through grief and deeply missing parts of home and learning what God is doing through the tougher moments of Carly’s battle with depression and anxiety, we hear a small glimpse into just how deep, how wide the Father’s love is for us through their story.

how they met / testimonies

Carly and Axel met when they were 13/14 in 8th grade. They went to the same middle school/high school, officially meeting in youth group. They had been friends all throughout that time and didn’t start dating until senior year of high school, where Carly shares she liked Axel first.

Carly grew up in a Christian home, has a family with two half-siblings and whose parents are still married. It was after she was born, that her mom really grew in her love for Jesus. In second grade her family moved cities, and went through a really rough patch but found Jesus while attending youth group. Most of her growing up years were in Orange County, California and as she started getting older she began to have a really big heart for international work. 

Axel is half Swedish/half American, was born in Sweden but grew up in Albania because of the missions work his parents were doing there. They later moved to the United States but he was acquainted with international travel because his family had in involved in missions.

getting married

Carly and Axel got married after 4 years of dating and one of the first things they did was road trips across the country both interning at the same Christian NGO. They had a lot of hard talks about whether the possibility of moving abroad was the right move a month or so into being married. It was all exciting when applying but as the leave date got closer Carly began to wonder if this was really the right decision for them as they had a really good thing going at home. 

They got placed in Uganda randomly, as a couple for the skillsets they had and where the need was. Going from active separate lives to working and transitioning to driving to work together, spending a lot of together time was something they’ve been actively working on. Carly was assigned to helping to develop different programs while Axel is in operations and helping run things — doing separate things but doing a lot together still. 

The one thing about being so far from home is that while spending a lot of time together has been new and challenging at times, they’ve also really had to lean on each other a lot. It hasn’t been easy building community especially during lockdowns.

mental health

Carly opens up about mental health and her battle with depression and anxiety that started at a young age. (8-10). She didn’t talk about mental illness with her family because that was reserved for people who had “really extreme” cases.  In college, it got worse but was still not diagnosed. When Carly and Axel got married, Carly was coming off a really hard year that started after they got engaged. There were a ton of things going on with family, work, school, at those first 6 months of marriage were probably the hardest. Carly shares she was struggling to be social, to get out of bed, which was really hard on them. There is really no way to fix it, and medicine doesn’t cure it.

While in Uganda, there have been ebbs and flows where things get light again and there is a coming out of the darkness, yet it’s been a hard and exhausting journey. Axel has shown up in trying to understand and learning the best ways to respond when a depressive episode or anxiety attack comes on.

Axel shares he likes to please and have harmony in things which doesn’t really work with depression. He’s learning he can’t fix it…even though he’d like to. He has seen how he’s grown closer to his wife as he’s tried to feel the ways Carly is feeling. There’s a learning of being open to that he can’t fix it and trusting that God is in the midst of this and He’s working things for good through it. There are nights where things aren’t fixed and they can be sad yet in that place you can still trust that God is still doing something. 

Carly adds that she’s seen Axel grow so much in understanding and his responding in tenderness and kindness, has been incredibly healing because the last thing you want is to feel even more like a burden when battling through these things. Axel has shown up and help make decisions for his wife, or saying it’s okay if she doesn’t get to that thing today and it reminds her so much of Jesus and the grade of the gospel. 

I asked, “How can the church be better in this arena?” — Carly shares how in college people would say, because you’re struggling with this that must mean “You’re not reading your Bible enough or praying enough, but that is assuming someone’s spiritual life which isn’t helpful because you don’t know how hard that someone is hanging onto Jesus in their moments of darkness. When you read the Bible, nothing is linear. It’s not just a bandaid answer of ‘Do this and it’ll go away.’” When looking at the Israelites in the desert, we see that. They didn’t pray and gain immediate exit from wildnerness. Instead it was,

 “We prayed and we listened to God and fell and stumbled and we tried again for 40 years.” - Carly

Coming alongside people and praying is not a bad thing to do, but trusting that God is taking someone through something you might not understand is needed too. Because of this depression and anxiety, Carly has been able to relate to people having run on empty for so long and trusting God through it in the process. “This is a part of the human experience, it might not be cured overnight".” Trusting the journey God has someone on is where we get to be a loving neighbor or friend God commands us to be. Instead of assuming there’s sin in their life or they aren’t being a “good enough” Christian, it’s better that we “help them get out of bed and help them remind them of God’s kindness and His love.”

Uganda

Carly and Axel answer a couple of Uganda culture questions for us — like what “African time” is and what some of the staple flavors are.

African time = people aren’t in a rush even though there’s a time or deadline for something, and while English is the national language there’s still a lot of miscommunications. Christianity is prevalent but there is still the influence of Islam and although someone might be Christian they still have worries about age-old curses this shows up especially in the villages. I also got to try, matooke, a banana plant that is steamed and mashed, similar to mashed potatoes but bananas.

The Marriage Journal

Carly and Axel have recommended The Marriage Journal. It helps you walk through talking through basic questions at beginning of the week, walk through each other’s schedules/ being aware of each other’s lives, especially if you work apart from each other 

And in their one year of marriage, they share what they’ve learned so far….that grace and forgiveness are the saving things, and choosing to be students of each other are important too. This isn’t easy if you’ve known someone for so long and already knowing that you know them as no one else does but that can be really dangerous because you can stop being curious about your spouse. 

Carly closes with, “It’s so important to understand how much God loves you, you won’t be able to love your spouse that well until you realize that. I haven’t really understood that until the last 6 months. I’m understanding God’s unconditional love and receiving forgiveness for myself. It’s important to sow that seed that no matter what you do, God still loves me so deeply, so fully.”