We like to think we understand the world better than a lot of people around us. We have our finger on the pulse of the world. We see what's really going on behind the news, the culture, and the church. We even understand ourselves, we think. So when we get hit with problems of our own making, we're usually told these days to be more mindful, more aware. If only we had been more mindful, our problems would resolve.

We're given the modern mantra of mindfulness - but what are we mindful of?

A normal part of growing up and growing older is to gain awareness of our particular pains and proclivities. But can we say the same of the path ahead? The fog often reaches in here and obscures our vision. There are days in the fog when the problems take up all the bandwidth - we see them in full resolution, with distinct edges, in smooth motion. But the way forward is hidden, blurred.

We can get stuck there. Where there is trauma, and where there are practiced and well-worn neural networks, we can be so much more aware of those patterns and tendencies. But does that awareness automatically (or magically) break us out of those patterns? Of course not. And there is nothing wrong with that. So it's not enough to just be able to see our problems.

While we are content to allow medical professionals deal with physical medical issues - like broken bones, sprains, arthritis, diabetes - we have this practiced expectation in the church that Jesus will just make all of the psychological stuff better. We've heard enough testimonies like that, haven't we, that we want to function as if that's the way it's supposed to work. "I was very anxious, but I gave that to God, and now I'm free." "I was addicted to drugs, but I called on Jesus, and I haven't used since."

We are driven to do this at that macro level. We pick our big boogeyman problems and try to deal with them that way, and it doesn't work - then what? What did we miss? Well, we have a few options. One is that life (and Jesus) just doesn't work that way all the time. Another explanation would be that we failed to do it right.

The first option represents freedom, if we can grasp it. But our strong attraction to that second option is undeniable - that's where we find an irresistible gravity well, calling us to try again and again ad nauseum. Always, it seems, the same result.

And we are often compelled, in the fog, to practice the same pattern even in the finer details of our lives. We run into this cycle almost daily: "I'm not getting what I'm praying for, so I need to get better at praying." "I'm not getting anything out of my Bible reading and study. I need to find some fresh study techniques." "My kids might not grow up to follow God. I'd better really preach it to them all the time."

At the root of it, though, are we still trying to give all these things to Jesus? Well, no, we're not - we're really functioning as though our faith were in faith itself. As if our ability to conform our interaction with God and the universe would procure certain results for ourselves. That's the gravity well, and it's a well-hidden pit in the fog: I don't have all I want, because I didn't do it right.

To be fair to ourselves, there are any number of Bible passages that cause our minds to continue operating this way. You can probably think of some right off the top of your head. We read a lot of words with that lens in place, and we have so large a measure of church tradition and teaching that backs it up. Bible-believing teachers for centuries have burdened believers with faulty paradigms of discipleship.

So how do we break out of that kind of pattern? Well, once we're aware of it, we need also be aware that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. We pursue our faulty pattern because of shame felt or shame feared - and we "decided" (usually not consciously) that we needed to follow our own efforts to create the world we wanted, rather than waiting on the hand of the Savior. I don't want to live in a world where I don't get what I pray for, so I need to find a way to make it happen. I don't want to see my children fall away, so I do enough that I can live with myself if that, in fact, happens.

When we finally learn that what we thought was intense godly activity was actually an unending hamster wheel seeking to create a world in our own image - that's when we can start to pick up our heads, look around, and see what God is actually doing in our time.

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