Prayer for Emotional Healing

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Lord Jesus, the wounds I carry tonight are not on my skin. They are deeper than that. They are inside where no one can see except you.

The psalmist writes in Psalm 34, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. I am a little crushed, Lord, maybe more than a little.

There are wounds I am still carrying. Some are old, going all the way back to childhood. Some are new, fresh from the past few weeks. Some I am not even sure I can name. I just know they are there, like a dull ache that never quite leaves.

Tonight, I want to bring them to you. Not all at once, that would be too much. Just one or two. The ones that are loudest tonight.

Lord, you know the rejection I am still carrying. The moment when someone I trusted turned away. The friend who disappeared. The parent who never said the words I needed to hear. The lover who chose someone else. The community that pushed me out.

The wound is real, Lord. The hurt is real. I am not making it up. I am not too sensitive. I felt it because it happened.

You felt rejection too, Lord. You came to your own, and your own did not receive you, as John writes in Chapter 1. Your hometown rejected you. Your closest friends abandoned you at the moment you needed them most. Even your Father seemed to turn away on the cross. You know.

So when I bring you this rejection, you do not just understand it intellectually. You understand it from the inside. Heal it, Lord. Where the wound has festered, where it has shaped how I see myself and how I see other people, where it has made me wary, defensive, distant, angry, please reach in and heal it.

I bring you the betrayal too, the trust that was broken, the promise that was not kept, the truth that was twisted, the confidence that was shared. You know the pain of this, Lord. Judas was your friend. Peter denied you. The disciples scattered.

Heal what their betrayal did to my capacity to trust. Help me trust again, wisely but truly. Help me not let the actions of one person define how I treat everyone after.

I bring you the grief, the losses that have not fully healed, the death of someone I loved, the end of a season I cannot get back, the dream that died, the future I had imagined that will not happen. Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb. You know grief. Weep with me, Lord.

And then, in your time and your way, raise the dead places in me. Even if the resurrection is just a small one, even if it is only a sense that hope is possible.

I bring you the shame. The voice that says, I am not enough. That I am too much. That if people really knew me, they would not love me. That I am defective in some essential way.

The voice has been with me a long time, Lord. I cannot silence it on my own. Speak your truth louder than the lie. I am yours. I am loved. I am known fully and held tenderly.

Holy Spirit, you are the Comforter. The word in Greek is paraclete, the one called alongside. Come alongside me tonight. Hold the parts of me that no one else can hold.

St. Raphael, archangel of healing, intercede for me. Mother Mary, mother of all the wounded, hold me close.

I do not need to be all the way healed by morning. I just need to know you are with me in the wound, and that is already a beginning.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.