The Healing Lesson Hidden in My Fifth Metatarsal
An Injury That Became a Teacher
In 2023, I broke my fifth metatarsal after taking a sharp right turn a bit too quickly down the uneven staircase in my Nouakchott home. What followed was a season of enforced stillness—simply sitting and allowing this stubborn foot bone to heal. Yet the more revealing part of the recovery was everything that formed around the injury. Overcompensating for the break caused my hip to tighten, my back to ache, and even my uninjured foot to carry strain it was never meant to bear.
When I finally began walking again, my steps were hesitant and unsteady. I had to relearn a basic movement I had taken for granted my whole life. A few years later, the bone is healed, but it still offers reminders. On days when I overwork it, the foot aches or swells slightly—showing that healing does not always erase the history of an injury. And when that happens, I have to stop, pay attention, and rest my foot again.
Understanding Leadership Trauma
As I read Nicholas and Sheila Wise Rowe’s Healing Leadership Trauma, I found myself returning to the memory of my broken foot and the slow, necessary work of allowing it to heal well. That experience has become an analogy for me in considering leadership trauma: even when the initial “break” is obvious, the deeper work often lies in attending to what forms around it, noticing our compensations, and giving ourselves the practices and time needed for genuine restoration. Just as physical healing unfolds differently for each person, so does healing from leadership trauma.
Rowe and Rowe describe this kind of trauma as the experience of “fear and panic about [one’s] work as it relates to the past, present, and future.”[1] In their view, leaders are often carrying much more than what initially caused the injury. The invitation, then, is to enter a healing process marked by self-awareness and compassion. As they write, “each of us is on our individual and unique healing journey and in need of embodied practices that are centered in Christ.”[2]
To support this journey, the authors aim to help leaders “grieve what was lost, stolen, or frittered away while introducing spiritual formation practices that help maintain forward progress.”[3] They introduce a set of embodied practices—what they refer to as SIFTing—including Scripture reading, body scanning, prayer, and examen. “As we prayerfully engage in these,” they note, “they can help create the foundations of a healthy Christian life and support and sustain spiritual and emotional healing and growth.”[4]
When I consider the authors’ emphasis on SIFTing practices, I am reminded of how essential it is for leaders to have the margin to engage in this kind of healing. Just as my foot could not recover without a period of reduced activity, leaders cannot do deeper inner work when their schedules or expectations leave no room for rest. Without sufficient margin, many of us end up forcing ourselves to function beyond capacity, relying on human effort rather than meaningful renewal. Rowe and Rowe write, “You will not see where the weakness lies or what God is doing if you are too busy trying to be strong.”[5] Christ-centered holistic disciplines help leaders slow down, notice what hurts, and recognize where they are overcompensating. Yet without margin, leaders lack the conditions that make such practices possible, often missing early signs of strain just as I initially overlooked how my body was compensating around my injury.
Margin and the Capacity to Heal
The importance of margin becomes even clearer when viewed through Richard Swenson’s work. Swenson offers a simple formula for understanding margin—Power – Load = Margin—and explains that “when our load is greater than our power, we enter into negative margin status…another name for burnout.”[6] He further observes that a “clock-dominated nanosecond culture” leaves many leaders “wheezing and worn out.”[7] In environments like this, even well-intentioned healing practices become difficult to sustain because leaders are already operating beyond capacity.
Much like my body developed compensations around a single fractured bone, leaders without margin may keep moving but at the cost of increasing strain elsewhere. This is precisely what prevents the SIFTing practices described by Rowe and Rowe from taking root. Without margin, leaders may continue forward, but not toward wholeness; instead, they risk reinforcing patterns that eventually surface as fatigue, disconnection, or burnout.
Psychological Safety With God
For some time, I have been reflecting on what it means to create spaces that foster psychological safety, a term used by professor and researcher Amy Edmondson to describe environments where people feel free to show up honestly. As leaders, we often work hard to offer this kind of space to others, yet rarely consider our own need for it. This raises an important spiritual question: when we come before God, do we allow Him to offer us that same sense of safety? Do we bring our whole selves into God’s presence, or do we hold back parts of ourselves as though we could hide them from the One who already sees us completely?
Barton’s reflections in Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership speak directly to these questions. She writes, “In the process of transformation the Spirit of God moves us from behaviors motivated by fear and self-protection to trust and abandonment to God; from selfishness and self-absorption to freely offering the gifts of authentic self.”[8] In other words, what we are hesitant to bring before God is the very material God longs to transform. Barton invites leaders “to continually seek God in the crucible of ministry no matter how hard it gets,”[9] suggesting that the psychological safety we long to create for others begins with the courage to be fully known and received by God ourselves.
When we consider Rowe and Rowe’s approach, the work of healing leadership trauma requires both the practices of SIFTing and the conditions that allow those practices to take root. Swenson’s emphasis on margin reminds us that leaders need space—physical, emotional, and spiritual—to notice what is happening within themselves rather than forcing themselves to function beyond capacity. And as Barton offers a spiritual formation perspective that supports the inner work leadership trauma often requires, she highlights the importance of bringing one’s whole self before God without fear or self-protection. Much like my own healing began by paying attention to what hurt and slowing down long enough for my foot to recover, these elements—Christ-centered embodied practices, margin that creates room for healing, and a posture of honest openness before God—allow leaders to engage the slow, purposeful work of restoration that strengthens both their leadership and their souls.
[1] Rowe and Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma, 2, Kindle edition.
[2] Nicholas Rowe and Sheila Wise Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma: Finding Emotional Health and Helping Others Flourish (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2024), 19, Kindle edition.
[3] Rowe and Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma, 5, Kindle edition.
[4] Rowe and Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma, 19, Kindle edition.
[5] Rowe and Rowe, Healing Leadership Trauma,6, Kindle edition.
[6] Richard A. Swenson, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004),70.
[7] Swenson, Margin, 78.
[8] Ruth Haley Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership: Seeking God in the Crucible of Ministry (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008),16.
[9] Barton, Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership,17.
About the Author
Elysse Burns
4 responses to “The Healing Lesson Hidden in My Fifth Metatarsal”
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Hi Elysse, The residual ache of your previously broken toe reminded me of Paul’s repeated request of God to remove the thorn of his flesh. God’s answer to him in 2 Corinthians. 9 was” My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” For Paul, it was conceit; for you, it was slowing down. Regardless of the purpose, I see you paying attention to connecting to God in these times, allowing His goodness to come into the hurt. What impact do you think the time slowing down for your foot to heal has had on your perspective as a leader?
Elysse, I love your connection of your broken foot to margin, SWIFTing, and holistic healing. What “Christ-centered embodied practices” do you feel He is currently inviting you to engage in during this season?
Elysse,
Good job using your broken pinkie toe and connecting it to leadership trauma. Being on the field can be very challenging and hard to develop good protective rhythms to stay healthy. I know that for me we had gone an entire year never leaving our area. That was super unhealthy. I decided after that that we would never stay longer than 3 months at a time without getting out of our context for a break. It was the only way we could remain partially sane. Do you have any set rules you have put in place to keep yourself healthy?
Hello Dr. Elysse,
I enjoyed reading your post. I have a general question:
What strategies for helping others flourish did the book highlight, and how might you apply them in your own leadership context?