Wiggle Your Fingers. Wiggle Your Toes.

What if bracing yourself is keeping you from your life?

A client told me a story recently that I haven’t stopped thinking about.

He said he once heard a military pilot explain that when pilots are learning high-pressure maneuvers, sometimes the very thing making them struggle is how tightly they’re gripping the controls.

Their bodies tense up.
Their breathing changes.
Everything in them starts bracing.

And the instructor would say something simple:

“Wiggle your fingers. Wiggle your toes. Loosen up.”

Not because the situation wasn’t serious.
But because gripping tighter wasn’t actually helping them fly better.

I immediately thought:
I think so many of us are living exactly like that right now.

White-knuckling our way through life.

Trying to control outcomes.
Preparing ourselves emotionally for disappointment before anything has even happened.
Holding tension in our bodies like it somehow protects us from pain.

I know this feeling intimately from my infertility journey.

I wanted something so deeply that I thought if I loosened my grip for even a second, it would mean I didn’t care enough.

So I carried the weight of it everywhere.
I rehearsed worst-case scenarios.
I emotionally braced myself over and over again.
It was exhausting!

Now I see this same tension everywhere.

Mothers trying to hold themselves together while preparing to launch their kids into adulthood.
 

Women carrying marriages, businesses, aging parents, finances, uncertainty, grief, dreams, disappointments, and expectations all at once.

So many people are physically present…
but emotionally living somewhere out in the future, rehearsing pain that hasn’t even arrived.

And while we’re busy bracing ourselves, we miss the life that’s actually happening right in front of us.

The conversation at dinner.
The ordinary moments that later become sacred memories.
The laughter.
The connection.
Today.

I’m not saying hard things won’t happen.
They will.

But I am saying that fear rarely prepares us for pain as much as it disconnects us from presence.

And I wonder if maybe God is inviting some of us to loosen our grip a little.

To unclench.
To breathe again.
To stop carrying tomorrow before it arrives.

Not because life is easy.
But because He is still here inside of it.

Maybe peace isn’t found in controlling every possible outcome.

Maybe peace is found in trusting God enough to stay fully present in the life we have today.

So, where is God asking YOU to wiggle your fingers and toes today?