LORD JESUS, I ask You to enter into this person who has need of your healing in the depths of the mind. I ask You to come, Lord, as a careful housekeeper might come into a house that has long been closed and neglected. Open all the windows and let in the fresh wind of Your Spirit. Raise all the shades, that the sunlight of Your Love may fill this house of the soul. Where there is sunlight there cannot be darkness. Therefore I rejoice that as the light of Your love now fills this mansion of the soul, all darkness shall flee away. And indeed in Your name I speak to that darkness, gently telling it that it cannot abide here in this one whom You have redeemed upon Your cross. Look and see, O Lord, whether there be any ugly pictures, take them down and give to this memory house pictures of beauty and joy. So out of all the ugliness of the past make beauty. O Lord, for it is ever Your nature to make beauty. Transform old sorrows into the power to comfort others who have sorrow. Heal old wounds by Your redemptive love, and turn them mysteriously into a love that heals the wounds of others.
‘Go back, O Lord, through all the rooms of this memory house. Open every closed door and look into every closet and bureau drawer and see if there be any dirty and broken things that are no longer needed in one’s present life, and if so, O Lord, take them completely away. I give thanks, for this is the promise of the Scriptures: As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalms 13:12) Look, O Lord, upon any memories that may come up from the deep mind as these words are meditated upon, and in Thy mercy fulfill in this Thy servant that forgiveness accomplished long ago on Calvary.
Go Back even to the nursery in this memory house even to the years of childhood. Here, also, open windows long sealed and let in the gentle sunlight of Your love. Here more than anywhere, Lord, make everything clean and beautiful within. Take a broom of mercy and sweep away all dirt from the floor of this memory room, even the confusion and the horror and the shame of ancient memories, perhaps of childish and uncomprehended sins, perhaps of the sins of the parents, those parents, those parents who should have been as God parents, those parents who should have been as God Himself to the child and who were not. Take a clean cloth, O Lord, and wash away all dust and wipe away every stain from the walls and from the furniture. Purge this Your child with hyssop, O Lord, that the heart may be clean. Wash this one that the soul which is created in Your own image and after Your own likeness may be whiter than snow. Look within the closets and under the furniture and see whether there be any broken or dirty toys, any old unclean rags of memory that are surely not needed any ore at all in the adult life. And if so, O Lord take them entirely away; gather them into Your own redemptive love, that the burden of them may rest upon the soul no more.
Follow the soul of this Your child all the way back to the hour of birth and heal the soul even of the pain and the fear of being born into this darksome world. Restore in the soul that bright memory, but which is rather an emanation, and unconscious infilling of the eternal radiance from which this one was born. And if even before birth the soul was shadowed by this human life and was darkened by the fears or sorrows of the human parents, then I pray that even those memories or impressions may be healed, so that this one may be restored to Your original patter, the soul as free and as clean as though nothing had ever dimmed its shining. ThusI pray, O Lord, that You will restore the soul as You made it to be and will quicken and awaken in it all those creative impulses and ideas that You have placed therein, so that whatever Your purpose may be for its human pilgrimage, that purpose may be fulfilled.
“He restoreth my soul. So said David long ago. He leaders me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.” (Pslams 23:3)
I give thanks, O Lord, knowing that this healing of the soul is Your will and is the very purpose of the giving of Your life for us, and therefore it is now being accomplished and by faith I set the seal upon it.”