The closing of a year isn’t all about clear victories and tidy conclusions. Baffling questions remain. Goals left undone. Wounds not quite healed. The ever-mysterious job of parenting…

As Acton Academy parents, we have made this bold, not common, choice: we will give our children freedom to wrestle with their problems, sit in the doldrums and climb sharp, craggy mountains on this journey of learning and life.

Yes, we will even let them suffer.

(Is this why I have more wrinkles than I want?)

At the close of the year, I need to remind myself that we do this because we know that giving our children this full – not glossed over – learning experience will give them the best gift of all: truly owning the victory of following their bliss and serving the world in an authentically unique way.

This poem by Wendell Berry has helped me in this real work we parents have chosen. I also share it with my children when their going gets tough:

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.