Here’s a little poem from Marianne Williamson’s Illuminata that I have liked for a long time, and am currently finding useful – yet again:

Dear God,
I surrender to You my striving.
I let go all need to effort or to struggle.
I relax deeply into things exactly as they are.
I accept life, that it might move through me with grace.
Amen.

Please don’t let the G-word turn you away. I know I had that issue for awhile, but I would have missed some valuable stuff along the way if I hadn’t broadened my idea of the word and subbed my own ideas. You can pray to whatever you believe in. The “God” referred to in the poem is based on the concept of God in A Course in Miracles, but it can be Jesus, Krishna, your higher self, the life force, love, spaciousness or whatever your personal conception is.

I think the important idea here is not who or what is prayed to, but about stopping the striving. There’s a sense of peace and freedom in taking a break from the efforting, if only for a second, so we can see what we’ve been pushing against.

Striving is not the same as working hard. It’s the striving “against’, and resistance to reality, to what is. What if you stopped, rested from your striving for a minute? For an hour? A day? Can you feel it? It’s peace.