Before you read: This post talks about grief—specifically a season of compounded loss in my own life. I don’t get into clinical detail or suicidal ideation here the way I did last week, but if you’re in active grief right now, please take care of yourself. You don’t have to read this today.
Post 3 of 5 in the Weaponized Verses Series—five Saturdays of Mental Health Awareness Month, five passages we often get wrong.
Imagine with me for a moment. You’re standing in the crowd outside the tomb. You’ve been here four days. Mary and Martha sent word to Jesus when Lazarus first got sick…and Jesus didn’t come. He didn’t even leave until two days later. By the time He walked into town, Lazarus was already dead and buried.
And now He’s here, and Mary is at His feet, saying the thing everyone’s been thinking: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
You’re watching Him. You’re watching to see what He does with that.
He asks where they’ve laid the body.
And as they’re leading Him to the tomb—the tomb He’s about to open, the brother He’s about to raise—Jesus cries.
“Jesus wept” is the shortest verse in the Bible, but it holds so much meaning. Jesus knew that He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. So, why did He cry?
I think a lot of Christians have spent their whole lives trying to skip past the part where Jesus wept.
Romans 8:28 Isn’t Wrong, But the Timing Often Is
Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
On one hand, this verse brings hope, comfort, reassurance. But on the other hand, if this is dropped on someone in fresh tragedy, it can cause unintentional harm.
Premature redemption. Skipping past all the pain to get to the meaning before we’re ready.
Think of scenarios you’ve heard this verse dropped. At a funeral, before the casket is in the ground. Right after a miscarriage. In a hospital waiting room. The day someone finally tells you what happened to them. During a divorce. Two days after a diagnosis.
The hidden message in those drops is: Don’t dwell. Don’t sit in this. The good is coming, so move on.
Which is all true. But in this case, the weaponization of this verse isn’t about the content, but about the timing.
The Day I Decided Not to Grieve
I remember sitting in my room at college, staring at the bear my Lola (grandmother) had given me before she passed away and thinking, “I really don’t feel like grieving today.” I felt the sadness bubbling up, but I was so tired of mourning all my lost loved ones. So, instead I shoved the sadness down. I decided not to feel it.
Looking back, I see why I buried the sadness; there was too much. I was in survival mode. I had lost three loved ones in four years and couldn’t function unless I buried my feelings.
And that’s the part that makes this verse different from the others in this series—we don’t even need anyone else in the room to weaponize it on us.
We Do This To Ourselves
In my case, no one dropped Romans 8:28 on me while I was in fresh grief. I did it to myself. I had already skipped ahead in my journey and was ready to see the good that came of all the losses. I didn’t give myself time to process. I just wanted to pretend I was fine.
We’ve absorbed the “good Christians don’t dwell on the bad stuff” message so completely that under enough pressure, we do it to ourselves as a survival mechanism. And we call it faith.
Romans 8:28 becomes the verse we use to bypass our own pain. To be “fine” before we actually are.
But shoved-down grief and trauma doesn’t stay shoved down forever. It can come back as anxiety. As depression. As unexplained anger. Physical symptoms. It can slow our healing or stall it completely.
My piles of grief for each person I lost morphed into a complex monster of depression and anxiety. I wasn’t able to identify my emotions anymore. I ignored how I felt and pretended I was okay. It wasn’t until everything boiled over into debilitating panic attacks that I realized how much I was burying.
What Faithful Grief Looks Like
Before we go any further, Romans 8:28 is REAL. God does redeem things. He does work all things for good.
But we need to remember, it’s not a timeline. The verse doesn’t tell us to skip the trauma or skip the grief. It doesn’t say that the good arrives on the schedule that makes other people comfortable.
When this verse gets dropped on us in the middle of fresh tragedy, we hear it as a verdict on our faith. We think, “I should be okay with this because God works all things for good.”
But Jesus wept. He allowed Himself to grieve even though He knew all things would work together for good.
On the way to the tomb, knowing He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, He wept anyway. Jesus didn’t show up and say, “Don’t worry! It’ll all be fine.”
He cried.
Joseph experienced the same when confronting his brothers all those years later. “You meant evil, God meant for good” (Genesis 50:20). Joseph named the evil as evil first. He held both. He never said he was glad his brothers sold him. But he acknowledged that the trauma did eventually work for the good.
Real Healing Isn’t Faster Healing
Years later, I went through another deeply painful season. This time, instead of pushing the feelings down, I made the conscious choice to let myself feel the negative parts at the pace they needed. I didn’t rush myself to “fine”. I knew that if I put in the work now, it wouldn’t show up unannounced, unresolved later. And while it was incredibly difficult and might’ve seemed easier to shove it all down, I found healing on the other side. Not faster healing, but full, complete healing.
Rushing grief doesn’t make it shorter. It makes it longer and meaner and harder to recognize when it comes back.
It’s okay to not be okay.
If you’re the griever or going through a tragedy:
- You’re allowed to cry even when you know “it’ll be okay”.
- You’re allowed to be angry at a verse that’s true.
- You’re allowed to not know what God is doing yet.
Sitting in the grief isn’t a faith failure at all. Sitting in the grief is modeling faithful grief, just like Jesus did with Lazarus.
If you’re supporting someone going through a tragedy:
- Don’t drop Romans 8:28 on someone in active suffering. You may mean well, but it’s not the right time yet.
- When Job’s friends finally sat in silence, they got it right.
- Sometimes just being present helps more than you know
Romans 8:28 Doesn’t Need You to Hurry
Jesus knew that Lazarus would walk out of the tomb in five minutes. And He stood at the grave and cried.
He didn’t skip the grief. He didn’t shortcut it. He didn’t say, “It’s going to be okay.” He wept with the people who were weeping.
Even if you know it’s going to be okay, it’s still okay to cry, mourn, grieve, scream. Jesus knew Lazarus was going to be okay. And He still let Himself mourn.
Romans 8:28 will still be true on the other side of your healing. It doesn’t need you to skip the grief to stay true.
