I CHOOSE RED

When stillness is not a choice — it's a prescription

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July 11, 2023. Plaster room. Second cast. My left hand wrapped tight — wrist to thumb, all the way up.

There’s a moment when you realize… this isn’t going to be quick.

I looked down at the color and knew before anyone asked.

There was no clinical reason for red.

It was a prayer before the cast even dried.

Some answers don’t look like answers.

Some arrive in a Target parking lot.

Some you have to look up to see.

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DEDICATION

To Marty — who stood with me through every hard day of this season and never once let me own the hardship instead of the recovery. You are irreplaceable.

To the medical teams who brought their best skill and care to a high-risk patient and gave me a fighting chance at restoration.

To my Heavenly Father — who never stopped working even when I couldn’t see what He was building.

To the woman in the Target parking lot who will never know she was the answer to a prayer.

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SCRIPTURE(S)

Be still, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10 (NKJV)

My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NKJV)

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THE HOOK

I’m not someone who thinks much about colors.

I wear what fits. I drive what works. I don’t put a lot of stock in the aesthetics of things built to function.

But that day in the plaster room — they asked me what color I wanted.

And I didn’t hesitate.

Red.

Not because I liked it.

Not because it would stand out.

Because in that moment, sitting in that chair with my hand wrecked and my future uncertain…

I was praying the blood of Jesus over everything that cast was going to touch.

That was the prayer.

Red was the answer I gave out loud.

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THE STORY

Four surgeries on my left hand. Finger joint. Thumb joint. Carpal tunnel. Basal thumb reconstruction — the one nobody can fully prepare you for.

I was a high-risk patient walking into all of it.

Marty had been brought up to speed.

We walked into that season the way we walk into most hard things — quiet, eyes forward, fully aware.

When the cast went on, I didn’t know if I’d get my hand back completely.

Three years later — I still don’t.

Thirty percent compromised. That’s just the number now.

And somewhere between the surgery and accepting that number…

I learned something about stillness I hadn’t understood before.

A cast doesn’t just hold a wound together.

It locks you in place so healing can work without your interference.

You can’t rush it.

You can’t muscle through it.

The cast makes the decision for you —

be still.

That’s not a metaphor I invented.

That’s just what happened to my hand.

But it became the clearest picture I’ve ever had of what God does in a broken season.

He doesn’t always explain the stillness.

Sometimes He just applies the cast.

And the only question left is whether you’ll trust the process —

or spend your strength trying to move what was never meant to move yet.

The rehabilitation comes. The work comes.

If you want to return to function, you have to do the hard work of getting there — nobody does that for you.

But first — you have to be still.

The stillness is not a defeat.

It’s a prescription.

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THE MOMENT

There was a day Marty and I walked into Target.

I was leaning on her more than usual. The headaches from the cervical surgeries were pressing in hard. I was quiet. Focused on getting in and getting out.

We were picking up a muscle relaxant the doctor wanted me to try — because at that point, there wasn’t much more they could do.

I had prayed on the way in.

Not a formal prayer.

More like a whisper from a man running on empty.

God… I really need Your help right now.

I don’t know how much more I can take.

Then I looked up.

She was just ahead of us.

A woman — maybe a little younger than me. Head shaved. A small child she was gently lifting into a cart, balancing herself on a walker.

Her left leg could barely bend.

Eyes down. Focused on each step.

Every step cost her something visible.

She wasn’t asking anything of anyone around her.

She was just… moving forward.

I stood there and watched for a moment.

And something in my chest shifted.

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He didn’t answer by lifting the weight.

He answered by shifting my eyes.

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THE TURN

I turned to Marty.

And I said quietly — I have nothing to complain about.

That was it.

That was the whole prayer answered.

Not the relief I asked for.

Not the removal of the hardship.

Just a woman I’d never meet —

moving forward on a walker with a child in a cart —

and suddenly my perspective had somewhere else to land.

I prayed for her right there.

Silently. Real.

And afterward I just stood in the stillness of it.

Taking it all in.

Every time I think I have it tough, God finds a way to show me someone carrying more.

Not to minimize what I’m walking through.

But to remind me —

be grateful.

You are not alone in this.

And somebody somewhere may be watching you the same way you just watched her.

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THE DRIFT

There’s a voice that sounds like honesty.

It says — you’ve earned the right to stay right here.

It says — nobody really understands what this season has cost you.

It says — keep your head down. Just get through it.

That voice feels protective.

Like it’s helping you survive.

It isn’t.

It narrows your world until all you can see is your own pain.

And when your world gets that small —

you miss every answer God sends that doesn’t look like relief.

I know. Because I lived it. For years.

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THE REFLECTION

Marty has a phrase she brings back every time the season gets heavy.

She doesn’t let me camp in the damage.

She pulls me forward with one line — every time:

Own the recovery, not the hardship. The restoration, not the tear down.

I’ve heard it in a hospital waiting room.

In a quiet kitchen on a hard morning.

On the days when getting vertical felt like its own surgery.

And every time — it reorients me.

Because the hardship is real.

The pain is documented.

The compromised hand, the surgeries, the headaches — all of it is real.

But if that’s all I own —

I become a man defined by what broke instead of what held.

The cast was never meant to be permanent.

It was meant to create the conditions for something to heal that couldn’t heal on its own.

And then the work begins.

Not because the pain is gone.

Because restoration is a decision you make before you feel ready.

God never wastes a wound.

What He locks into stillness —

He is already working on.

The cast comes off.

The rehabilitation begins.

And one day — even with 30% still gone —

you look down at what remains…

and realize it carried you further than you thought possible.

That’s not your strength.

That’s His grace doing exactly what it promised.

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WALKAWAY LINE

Stillness isn’t where your life stops — it’s where God does His deepest work.

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SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Where in your life has God applied a cast — and are you still fighting the stillness instead of trusting what He’s doing inside it?

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MY PRAYER

Heavenly Father,

You know every wound we carry — the ones that show and the ones that don’t.

You know the prayers we whisper when we have nothing left.

Thank You for answering in ways we didn’t expect — in the lives of others, in the quiet shifts of perspective, in the moments that bring us back to truth.

Teach us to trust the stillness.

To own the recovery.

To do the work when the time comes — not because we feel ready, but because You are faithful.

And when we see someone carrying more than we are — let us stop, let us pray, and let us be grateful.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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ABOUT G~

G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth. If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.

G~

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