For half a minute, all you can see is the gray, cloud-swept sky.

Will you soon be thrown into its depths?

The lap restraint presses gently into your thighs.

Will it hold your body in, or come flying loose in a nightmare malfunction? 

The rattling lift chain hammers in your ear drums.

Does it clatter with such volume because it’s faulty, rusted, ready to snap?

You begin to tip forward. Over the precipice. Your butt leaves the seat.

Your body hangs in the nothingness, ready to plummet.

Then you scream.

I love rollercoasters.

But there was a time when I didn’t.

In the summer of 1995, the carnival came to my tiny Northern Michigan home town for our annual summer festival, and it brought a new thrilling attraction: The High-Flyer.

The High-Flyer is a swinging ride that packs a dozen or so riders into a hotdog-shaped car and sends them looping into the air, going upside-down over and over until the riders scream, puke, or both. For me, this was my first upside-down ride, and I was terrified.

I remember grabbing the steel handles on the shoulder restraint with sweaty, white-knuckled fists. I remember holding my breath as the car swung higher and higher. And I remember squeezing the handles with all my might, somewhere thinking my effort was keeping me secured inside my seat.

I knew nothing of ride safety, or the engineering of restraint systems. I saw others raising their hands and thought, “Idiots!” I was going to hold on. I wasn’t going to die on this thing.

Because, I believed, surviving meant hanging on for dear life.

This fear has gripped me with its icy claws for many years.

After the High-Flyer, my next brush with certain fear-of-death came at “America’s Roller Coast,” Cedar Point. In 2002, on a graduation trip, I stared up at a behemoth of design and construction: The 310-foot tall giga coaster, Millennium Force.

Millennium Force is gigantic. It was especially enormous in 2002, because the Top Thrill Dragster (an unthinkable 420-feet tall) hadn’t been built yet. Staring up at its first lift hill pinched nerves in the neck. Hearing the roar of trains returning to the station thundered in the ears. My mouth hung slack at it, and my heart quivered with snowy fear.

This thing can kill me, I thought.

When I boarded the train, I pushed against the insignificant and thin lap restraint as hard as I could. It didn’t move.

But will it move later? 

I leaned forward and wrapped my hands around the smooth, freshly painted grab bar.

Could I hold on if the restraint failed? 

If you’ve ridden Millennium Force, then you probably remember the lift hill. It uses a special system that tows the train up the steep climb with startling speed. On your right is a stunning view of Cedar Point. On the left, however, is the gut-churning expanse of Lake Erie, a veritable grave of watery nothingness waiting to catch any bodies ejected by the coasters nearby.

The whole way up, I swore over and over.

I’m going to die, I repeated.

I’m going to fucking die. 

Then I reached the top, and the tow cable hauled the train over the top and dumped me into a near-vertical plunge.

My butt left the seat. The lap restraint hugged by belly.

But all I could feel was the cold steel of the grab bar in my hands as I held on for dear life.

Fear has been an unwelcome companion for most of my life. Yet there are times when I welcome it because it convinces me that I can keep control of chaotic situations. Fear can make a man believe it is by his effort, perhaps by holding onto a restraint or a grab bar, that he is kept safe in the seat of a whipping, whirling, diving rollercoaster.

It is the ultimate placebo, a sugar pill I take believing it is healing medicine.

Ultimately, any metaphor for fear breaks down. Fear is often a helpful voice that keeps us out of danger. Fear convinces us not to make wreckless investments or attempt dangerous stunts. Fear keeps us out of bad relationships and in good ones.

Yet there are so many moments of life that are unbelievably thrilling and entirely good that I cannot enjoy due to fear. It’s as if my hands are clenched around the flimsy grab bar of life, my knuckles permenantly white, in an effort to avoid falling out of a ride that is perfectly safe.

This, perhaps, is why I’ve come to love rollercoasters so much. They appear as death-defying risks but aren’t. No theme park could survive if its rides weren’t held to such a standard (I’m looking at you, Schlitterbahn).

Rollercoasters possess all the benefits of dangerously thrilling life choices without the hideous consequences. No on goes to therapy for rollercoaster addiction. No one becomes an absentee parent or goes to prison from excessive rollercoaster use.

Yet they are addicting higher-than-life sensations to be enjoyed and shared. Rollercoasters are the ultimate fear-defying experience.

Last week, I challenged Cedar Point’s newest creation: Steel Vengeance. A hybrid of steel track on a wooden frame, this new coaster has broken records and skyrocketed to the top of every coaster junkie’s Top Ten List.

And I can tell you from firsthand experience: It. Is. Insane. 

I won’t go into the technical aspects of all the forces it subjects you to – inversions, ejector airtime, all sorts of head-chopper illusions in the superstructure – but I will say this: Nothing in life comes close to the sensations of Steel Vengeance.

When I slid to a sudden stop at the end of the ride, I was howling with laughter. For two-and-a-half minutes, I had been living in this strange duel world of utter danger and complete safety. I was going to die… and I loved it.

And perhaps the best part of the Steel Vengeance experience is the lack of grab bars. With few exceptions, there is nothing to hold on to.

Nothing. 

You have to trust the restraint. There is nothing else that will keep you secured to your seat, least of all your grip.

So instead of holding on for dear life, I held something else: My wife’s hand. Seated side-by-side as we clattered up the lift hill, we took hands and grinned at each other. We were about to enter a world of zero control and complete trust. We were about to face death in a situation of unseeming safety.

Only in a rollercoaster can you live this way.

As I close, I’m tempted to make comparisons to something else where one is surrounded by danger yet completely safe: Faith.

And there is plenty we could talk about along this avenue.

But like all metaphors, again, this breaks down very quickly, and much depends on your own particular experience. Sometimes living with faith can feel exhilerating, similar to what one experiences on a rollercoaster. But at other times, it can feel like the ride is malfunctioning and you are about to suffer a grisly injury. Again, much depends on ones own experience.

I’ll leave that for another blog.

But for today, I want to close my eyes and order Fear to step aside for awhile. Everything is telling me that I’m about to die. The wind in my face, the heights separating me from the ground, the steep drops and jaw-dropping inversions I’m about to manuever.

I want to take my hands and let go. I want to open my fingers, let the wind wick the sweat away, and feel the freedom that only fearlessness can deliver.

I want to experience sweet vengeance over fear, like I felt on Steel Vengeance.

I want more freedom and less fear.

I hope you do too.