Recently, I had the privilege of being the Keynote Speaker at Total Women Outreach Ministry’s Women’s History Celebration in Laurinburg, NC. My topic was Cracked But Carried: Leading While Healing.
It was such a beautiful event. Women being honored across so many walks of life. Teachers. Entrepreneurs. A judge. The kind of room that just feels electric. And I always love going to Laurinburg. The people there are something special.
I talked about something the Holy Spirit had confirmed many times over. The idea that you don’t have to be fully healed before God can use you.
I know. That sounds like it should be obvious. But a lot of us don’t actually believe it. Not deep down. Along the way, somebody said to you that you can’t help anybody when you are still struggling yourself? I beg to differ.
The Crack That Started It All
Here’s the story I told. The one I didn’t plan to be a whole thing, but it became one.
I got a new phone. And when the rep tried to sell me a screen protector, I politely declined. Because I don’t drop my phone. I told him that with full confidence.
A few days later… I dropped my phone.
Picked it up. Looked at the screen. Cracked.
And I’m not going to lie, I was embarrassed. Not just because I’d just told that man I didn’t need a protector. But because I use that phone for everything. Personal stuff. Client work. I literally pull it out in sessions to show people tools and resources. That phone is part of how I show up professionally.
So now I had to keep showing up with a cracked screen.
One day I needed to show a client something, and I paused. Just for a second. Because I didn’t want her to see it. Didn’t want her to think I was careless.
But I showed it anyway.
And right in that moment, I heard the Holy Spirit say something so clearly it stopped me:
“It may be cracked… but you can still use it.”
I sat with that. Because He wasn’t just talking about the phone.
How Many of Us Are Walking Around Disqualified in Our Own Minds?
The crack didn’t stop that phone from doing a single thing it was designed to do. It still made calls. Still pulled up resources. Still worked. The only thing that changed was how I felt about it.
And I think that’s where a lot of us are living.
We went through something. A relationship that fell apart. A season that broke us a little. A mistake we haven’t fully forgiven ourselves for. And now we’re walking around thinking we’ve been disqualified, when the function is still there. The calling is still there. God didn’t revoke anything.
You may be cracked. But you are still being carried. And you are still being used.
Let me share the four steps I shared with the group to help them lead while healing
Step 1: Be Honest About What You’re Actually Carrying
That night, I said something simple: Some of us are carrying things nobody sees.
And I could feel the room shift.
Because we’ve gotten really good at functioning. Showing up. Handling it. But functioning isn’t the same as being free. A lot of us have learned to carry the weight so well that we’ve stopped acknowledging it’s even there.
This is where it has to start. Not with fixing, but with honesty.
What are you carrying right now that you’ve been pushing past instead of acknowledging?
Step 2: Decide What Actually Belongs to You
This one hit differently when I said it out loud.
I referenced Galatians 6:5, that each person carries their own load. But here’s the thing I’ve seen over and over, in my own life and in the women I work with: we’re not just carrying our own stuff. We’re carrying what other people handed us. Their expectations. Their words. Their unprocessed emotions that somehow became our responsibility.
And we’ve held on to it so long it feels like ours.
It’s not.
What are you holding onto that you need to give back, or give to God?
Step 3: Shift How You See the Crack
This is the phone story again, and I make no apologies for coming back to it.
Because so many of us have been judging ourselves for the crack. Treating it like evidence that we’re too broken, too messy, too far gone to be effective. But what if the crack isn’t disqualifying you? What if it’s actually making you more relatable? More real? More able to reach the person sitting across from you who’s also holding something cracked?
What have you been judging about yourself that hasn’t actually stopped you from showing up?
Step 4: Stand On It and Keep Going
One of my favorite things I said that night was this:
You don’t just survive what you go through. You stand on it.
There’s a difference. Surviving means you made it through. Standing on it means you let it become something. A foundation. A testimony. A tool. You don’t ignore what happened. You don’t pretend it didn’t leave a mark. But you stop letting it be only a wound and start letting God use it as a witness.
You can lead while you heal. Not after. While.
What can you stand on in this season instead of staying stuck in it?
Closing: The Crack Didn’t Cancel the Function
I want to leave you with something I closed my message with. A little story that I think will stay with you.
There was a woman who carried water every day using a clay vessel. But the vessel had a crack in it. And every day, as she walked, some of the water would leak out.
She began to feel embarrassed. Because she thought, “I’m losing what I was meant to carry.”
But one day she looked down at the path she walked every single day, and she noticed something.
Flowers had started to grow.
The water that leaked through the crack had been watering the ground the whole time.
What she thought was a flaw… was actually part of the purpose.
That’s your reminder today. Whatever you’ve been through. Whatever you’re still in the middle of. Whatever you’re not quite ready to talk about yet. It didn’t cancel you.
You are still carried. You are still called. And you are still enough to lead, right where you are.
Ready to Go Deeper?
If this resonated with you, I created a devotional specifically for this season you’re in. It’s called Cracked But Carried 30 Day Devotional: When You’re Mentally & Emotionally TIRED But Still Believing, and it’s designed to help you process what you’ve been carrying, release what was never yours to hold, and reconnect with God right in the middle of it all.
You don’t have to wait until everything feels fixed to move forward.
Dr. Nanette Floyd Patterson, LCMHC Christian Therapist | Master HIScoach™
