Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Valerie SchultzJune 01, 2015

When you go hiking up a mountain with your fit husband and fit daughter and find that, between the altitude and the steep grade, you can’t keep up with them, even though it’s a hike you’ve done before, you eat a little humble pie. Then, when your boot slips on some rocks on the way back down and you fall and bruise your tailbone, you eat a big slice of humble pie. You see by the solicitous looks on their faces that you have in fact aged while you were not paying attention, and maybe you should stick to activities more suited to your abilities. It’s a day for humble pie a la mode.

I must admit that I am surprised by physical limitations. I am used to feeling in control, at the top of my game, the super mom who can handle anything life proposes. Curtailing a hike due to waves of nausea and a pounding heart, and ending it clumsily on my butt, are not the kinds of events that jive with my self-image. And facing my shortcomings is not my idea of a pleasant morning.       

The taste of that humble pie, however, is a good reminder for me that I am not in charge, and that I have never been in charge. God is. My ego likes to think differently, but as Jesus reminds us, in the Gospel of Matthew, “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.” (Mt. 19:26) I need this reminder on a daily basis. If my career as a super mom has been entirely due to the presence of God, my growing older is also happening by the grace of God. My best moments have always occurred when I have relied on God rather than on my inflated image of myself.

I may yet try that hike again, after I tackle some smaller hikes, and if I get back into the shape that permits long, steep climbs up a mountain. But I will do it with clear-eyed gratitude: for legs that can walk and lungs that can breathe and a heart that intuits that everything I do is thanks to a good and gracious God. Sometimes pie is good for me.

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
GERRY DRUMMOND
10 years ago
An old friend just advised me to check out the last paragraph to what I thought was his blog. (Maybe it is?) "Everything I do is thanks to a good and gracious God," the writer says in working up to take a great hike by way of careful, slow training . . . in stages . . . which I am beginning myself again for the "x" time . . . I've been on that path before, discovering later there's a plan for me not my own making and, every once in a while, this realization overwhelms me as I wade through my day's mayhem and distractions. I'm still alive because of God, not because of me. Meantime, the spirit is reaching out to me through the Charlestown massacre in a completely unexpected way--I feel peace and serenity at the public forgiveness of those close to bible-study race victims. And so do others I met today sense the same spirit (or some spirit) reaching out to them. I just left a courthouse service organized by my Bergen County NAACP that was full of love and forgiveness beyond the creation of anyone of us . . . So let me be grateful . . . and pray that way.

The latest from america

Pope Leo XIV urged new archbishops to help him foster unity in a church rich in diversity. Eight of those new archbishops are from the United States, and they spoke to Catholic News Service about how they can help promote fraternity in today’s polarized world.
This week on “Jesuitical,” Zac and Ashley chat with Christopher White about his new book, ‘Pope Leo XVI: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.’
JesuiticalJune 30, 2025
Kerry Weber, incoming president of the Catholic Media Association, and executive editor of America Magazine, speaks June 26, 2025, during the Catholic Media Conference in Phoenix. (OSV News photo/Bob Roller)
Kerry Weber is an executive editor for America. On May 20, 2025, the Catholic Media Association announced that she was elected president,
Grace LenahanJune 30, 2025
"The whole church needs fraternity, which must be present in all of our relationships, whether between lay people and priests, priests and bishops, bishops and the pope," he said during his homily at Mass on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul June 29.