Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,
The beginning of autumn feels like a waking up, a little resurrection, as the long, hot days fade away and the world begins to soften and quiet down. Each year, I find more joy in finding more things that make this season what it is—the texture of seed pods, the different colors of different trees—and in the general changing of the landscape to gold, amber, and garnet under the silver blanket of the sky.
This year, summer is clinging on longer than I’d like—again—and I’m longing for more autumn rain and winds to say it’s finally time for warm sweaters, cool hikes among the leaves, and hot beverages. That it’s finally soup season. When autumn weather returns, I feel like I’ve woken up after a long, long nap.
Summer sun stresses me out, even when I stay indoors. I try to find things to enjoy. I seek out fireflies, learn to identify the flowers that bloom, pick raspberries, eat ice cream, and sip the iced tea that Ed brews, but it all feels like a consolation prize by mid-August. By early September, I’m nearly begging for the sun to go to sleep and grant me an early autumn.
I think I start wilting around late June, and I don’t feel quite like myself until the days get noticeably shorter, and the UV index noticeably drops, right around the beginning of October.
All that to say—it’s fall, y’all.
This intro was fully from my heart, but it’s also meant to serve as a pleasant section of this letter for those of you who aren’t looking forward to the rest:
The Grace of a Vomit Bag
Obvious content warning: Vomit/nausea
As many of you lovely readers already know, my husband, Ed, flies private planes as a hobby. Sometimes he’ll rent a four-seater and fly friends and acquaintances around, usually stopping for lunch at another airport before coming back.
This story of such a flight features a married couple from church whose names I will change, because if I threw up in somebody’s story, I don’t know if I’d want everyone to know about it. Let’s call them Ava (meaning “birdlike”) and Isaiah (meaning “Yahweh is salvation”).
Back in July, Ava had asked Ed if she could ride in a small airplane, because she really likes heights and had heard rumors about Ed offering to fly friends around the city. Ed agreed. Her husband, Isaiah, seemed willing to go, yet not exactly thrilled. So we started planning.
One Saturday near the end of September, as schedules and weather allowed, we met up at the regional airport where Ed typically rents airplanes. Ava and Isaiah chose to pack a lunch, so we did the same, and the four of us took off for a little tour around the city with a plan to land at a different regional airport for a picnic.
One detail that neither Isaiah nor Ava remembered beforehand is that Isaiah gets motion sick. He’s never thrown up in a big commercial airplane, but small planes are much bouncier than large planes, and more easily tossed about in the wind. Not long after takeoff, Isaiah was noticeably nauseous. He was doing the “I’m gonna vomit” gesture because his voice wasn’t coming through the headset.
It was almost a miracle that I was able to hand him a vomit bag.
And that’s why I’m telling this story:
I’ve never been very prone to motion sickness, but the two-seat plane Ed actually owns is so small that when it’s turbulent, or if I try to read or check my phone while I’m riding in it, I can get nauseous.
So after imagining trying to clean vomit out of our tiny plane’s fabric seats and hard-to-reach floor, I asked Ed to purchase some vomit bags.
Ed ordered them, and they arrived the day before the flight with Ava and Isaiah.
We’d purchased them for the small plane we own, not for rental planes, and yet for no reason I can account for, I suggested Ed bring along a bag, specifically for Isaiah, just in case. I can chalk it up to the original apprehension on Isaiah’s face, perhaps interpreting that as a motion aversion, but as far as I recall, neither one of them indicated that sickness was a risk.
What’s more, Ed remembered to bring the bag the morning of the flight. I don’t think I even mentioned it again, because it seemed like it wouldn’t be needed.
So because 1) I get nauseous in Ed’s small plane, 2) I asked Ed to buy vomit bags for such a circumstance, 3) and he bought the bags, which 4) arrived the day before the flight with Ava and Isaiah 5)—which would not have been the case if we’d gotten to fly the first time we scheduled it, which was canceled because the plane’s seat belt was broken and that plane was therefore grounded—and 6) I suggested, for no apparent reason, that Ed bring a vomit bag specifically for Isaiah, just in case, and 7) Ed remembered to bring said bag, and 8) Isaiah had the chance to ask if there was a vomit bag available instead of just vomiting suddenly or hoping the feeling went away.
So when a somewhat windy, and thus bumpy, landing resulting in Isaiah vomiting, it was contained in a well-designed bag that could then be placed in a trashcan at the airport we landed at instead of being all over the rental airplane.
Without such a bag, we would have had to fly back to the first airport with a plane in most unpleasant condition. I assume we would’ve had to pay a cleaning fee, and the airplane would’ve been grounded again, to the disappointment of those who’d scheduled it after us.
I thought about this all that day. I was, and am, astounded at how the details worked out so that the mess was thoroughly contained.
Isaiah would’ve been happier, I imagine, if God had merely prevented his nausea in the first place, but it appears God gets more glory when the need and the provision are both crystal clear like this.
It also was good for me to see how me not knowing things didn’t stop God from providing. I didn’t have an angel of the Lord visiting me in a dream, commanding us to bring such an item. I simply had a little thought.
“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” -Proverbs 16:9 (ESV)
I plan—maybe more than most people I know—but I don’t have to plan perfectly. I don’t have to think of every detail. As I’m trying to develop better judgment (per my July letter), I can also lean on God’s very tangible grace for mistakes and forgetfulness and blind spots.
The God of the Bible is still large and in charge, and if He cares about such tiny little details, I can trust Him with the big things, even when the big things don’t look like they’re going well at all.
I can walk in peace, if I walk with Him.
In my November 2023 letter, I wrote a little about theodicy—why a good, all-powerful God allows evil—and the big, terrible historical events that inspired Silence by Shūsaku Endō. I wrestled with it again this year, if only briefly, when we watched We Were the Lucky Ones on Hulu.
I definitely don’t have all the answers. And it can be hard to believe the Lord cares about the small details when the big things are going disastrously.
Yet I know that when things look dark—when things are dark—that doesn’t mean God stopped showing up to work. I know that Jesus getting crucified did not match His disciples’ expectations, yet His resurrection was around the corner.
Why does a hurricane devastate whole towns? Why was the Holocaust allowed, and the persecution of Christians in Japan’s Tokugawa period?
I don’t know why.
But it’s easier to put those questions to rest, at least for me, for now, when I see God doing something—big or small—for the people who love Him.
Writing & General Updates
A month off from writing these newsletters did me some good. I’ve been trying to get enough sleep, more exercise, more vegetables, and more novel-writing, and sometimes I’ve actually succeeded. I’m happy with the progress I made on my novel, though it’s slower than I’d like, always.
And this month, of course, I returned to writing my Substack letters.
My attempts at sleeping the right amount are currently being destroyed by our bathroom renovation, which is now is well underway.
I’m happy it’s being done, but I feel like a fish removed from its aquarium temporarily so the aquarium can be cleaned or upgraded. There are contractor noises coming from our main bathroom all day and my sleep schedule is wildly disrupted; I don’t typically wake up as early as the workers do, and napping under these circumstances is proving difficult. So my writing and editing have slowed down temporarily while I adapt.
And I had a little insomnia, along with a few too-early mornings, before this project began. So I blame any typos or errors in this letter on massive sleep debt.
Hurricanes
Because I write these on a monthly-ish basis, I seldom discuss current events, which often flow beyond the public consciousness by the time I’m ready to hit “send”. But in this case, Hurricane Milton is expected to hit Florida tonight, and I can’t pretend that’s not important.
First, let’s be praying for those affected, in any way, by Helene and/or Milton.
Then, if you are interested in donating or volunteering, a good option for both is Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian organization with an amazing rating on Charity Navigator.
If you’re reading this shortly before any major storm, literal or figurative, you may appreciate a very relevant blog post from my friend Tina Marie Cox, who lives in Florida and whose posts I’ve shared before: “When I Am Afraid”, Let’s Be Real, 8 Oct 2024.
Or, you may be reading this after severe weather (again, literal or figurative); you might be pausing while overwhelmed, perhaps between moments of trying to figure out how to clean, rebuild, and move your life forward. May God help you and show you His light in the darkness; may you walk so closely with Him that your feet find solid ground. And if you don’t feel you can walk, yet, may you notice how He carries you.
The only book I’ve ever heard of as useful in the aftermath of the loss of a loved one is C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, written shortly after his wife’s death as a way of coping. A fairly short summary of it is here: Jana Harmon, “A Grief Observed”, C.S. Lewis Institute, 1 March 2013. I hope you don’t need it, but if you do, I hope it helps a lot.
Media I Found Cozy Recently
Clarkson’s Farm, Season 3 (2024) - This show started out a bit silly and has become one Ed and I look forward to. Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson (of Top Gear and Grand Tour fame), we’ve learned about the struggles of modern British farming, and enjoyed the ups and downs of this farm in particular.
Little Forest (2018) - A slow-paced Korean movie based on a Japanese manga, Little Forest follows a young woman (Kim Tae-ri, who starred in the amazing show Mr. Sunshine) who runs away from her problems in Seoul by returning to her rural hometown. It covers a year of healing, farming, cooking, and eating. For me, it provided a vicarious sense of sabbatical.
That’s it for this October! If any of this was valuable to you—interesting, useful, or beautiful—share it with someone:
To truth, love, and adventure,
Rae
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