Last year I had a huge crack in my windshield from a rock that flew up and hit my car on the highway. Luckily, I had insurance to cover the cost of replacing it. But then a month or so later, it happened again. I was very upset because I knew I would have to wait a whole year to get insurance to cover another replacement. The good thing about this crack, though, was that it was super small and ran along the very top of the windshield on the passenger side. It actually wouldn’t be a problem at all. In fact, I forgot all about it.

Out of sight, out of mind… until it wasn’t.

Now it has almost been a year, and that tiny crack has slowly made its way directly into my visual field. There is no ignoring it anymore. I see it clearly every day and it distorts my view. I have to look over and under it. It has been so annoying that I talk about it with my husband at least once a week.

I think this is how most cracks happen in our lives. Something hard, painful, or traumatic happened in our childhood or early adulthood creating a fracture in our identity or relationships. But we can keep living life until one day that little crack becomes something we can no longer ignore. We feel the discomfort it brings up. We see it in our stories. It is distorting the way we see ourselves, our world, and even how we see God. It is impacting our relationships and influencing our decisions. This wound feels too big for all the bandaids we’ve placed on it. It requires real and deep healing that we can’t handle alone.

In John 4, we meet the Samaritan woman with fractured relationships and broken self-worth.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband.”
John 4:16-18 ESV

We are not told in the text the exact event that first created the crack in her life, but we can tell by this glimpse into this woman’s story that she is wounded. As we read about her encounter with Jesus, it’s clear she has a distorted view of life.

She is isolated. Whether an intentional decision to avoid people or because others have rejected her, she came to the well alone at the hottest part of the day, which is an uncommon practice.

She is insecure. Her immediate response to Jesus asking for water is to point out the racial and gender difference that makes her less than Him.

She is defensive. She tries to push Jesus away. “Are you greater than our Father Jacob who gave us this well?” As Jesus digs deeper into her personal life, she avoids the topic and shifts to blaming the Jews for telling Samaritans where they ought to worship.

Her brokenness was visible to her, to her community, and to Jesus. And while everyone else chose to ignore it, Jesus went out of His way to travel through Samaria and visit at a well to make her whole. Jesus chose this broken woman — with all her trauma and cracks — to be the first person to know that He is the Messiah. Not His disciples or His family, but her. And she becomes the first evangelist.

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” They went out of the town and were coming to him.
John 4: 28-30 ESV

Shame had silenced her and caused her to hide. Rejection had told her that she was beyond repair. But after meeting Jesus, she ran to the very people who rejected her and joyfully proclaimed her encounter with the Messiah! The story that once caused her shame became her ministry platform to point people to Jesus.

Friend, we all have these cracks. God can use the pain you’ve endured for a purpose, but living in the brokenness is not your purpose. You are meant to have abundant life and wholeness. So will you allow Jesus to expose those wounds so He can heal you from the inside out?

Jesus will not allow shame to steal your identity nor rejection to steal your purpose. He is waiting for you.

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