The first went live on Amazon yesterday.

When To Leave: How To Know It’s Time To Move On (Before You Stay Way Too Long) is a follow-up to my first book, Before You Go. When to Leave was originally intended to be a short addendum to Before You Go. But the more I thought about all the issues I wanted to address, and as I began to sketch out my ideas, it was obvious that When To Leave needed to be a book, not a new chapter stuck at the end of Before You Go.

When To Leave is a more complicated than Before You Go because in many cases knowing when to leave is harder than figuring out where to go.

Because I push back against what conventional wisdom says about how long a pastor should stay at a church, there is plenty of room for disagreement over a few of the positions I take. I’ll be interested to see the feedback to a couple of chapters

I sent early versions of the manuscript out to a number a friends, several of whom aren’t pastors or ministers. They said the material was applicable to their situations as well. So even if you’re not a pastor there are probably a few principles in When To Leave that will speak to your situation.

Very little of When To Leave has made an appearance on this blog. Expect lots of new material and a few stories I haven’t told anywhere else.

Did you know it’s super easy to buy a Kindle book as a gift for someone else? You buy it and they get an email from Amazon telling them to come download their new book. If you’d like to get rid of your minister, When To Leave would make an excellent “hint” gift. Try it. If it works, let me know.

What are you waiting for? Go buy it!

Don’t have a Kindle reader?

Not a problem. It can be read on any device (Macs, PCs, iPads, iPhones, Android devices and Blackberries) with the Kindle reader app. (Available here)

The Dark Side: Why You Can’t Afford to Stay Way Too Long

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
—Rocky Balboa

Boxers need someone else to stop the fight on their behalf. They’ve been trained to fight to the bell, to keep swinging as long as they’re still standing, to not give up until someone gets knocked out.

Pastors can be a lot like boxers. You’ve been trained to expect difficulty in ministry. You expect opposition to every worthwhile initiative you promote. You’ve read the gospels and enough church history to know that religious people can do awful things in the name of God. You understand the implications of following a crucified Lord who embraced suffering as a means to redemption.

So when you step into the ring and stand toe-to-toe with a church that tends to direct its collective anxiety, anger, and disappointment toward their minister, you expect to take a few punches. It’s part of the job. What you don’t expect is for your opponents to be wearing gloves laced with plaster.  Nor do you expect them to land so many head shots.

•    They overwhelm you with unrealistic expectations.
•    They hold you accountable for things you have no authority to change.
•    After highlighting your every mistake, they break out the list of problems they have with your family.
•    They question your integrity and assume the worst about your motives.
•    They send you hateful, anonymous emails that hit your inbox at 10pm so you see them before heading to bed.
•    They ambush you in what’s supposed to be a routine meeting.
•    They invite you to lunch to tell you that you’re not good enough to get the job done.
•    They pour gasoline on rumors and fan the flame of gossip.
•    They put sugar in your gas tank.

Because you’re faithful, because you’re arrogant, because you follow a crucified Lord, because you don’t know any better, or because no one will throw in the towel on your behalf, you keep taking punches.

You sway, you stagger, you bleed, but you keep standing.

Just like a boxer who takes too many head shots, you sustain permanent damage. Not to your brain, but to your soul. The long-term effects of soul damage can be devastating.

•    You stop dreaming.
•    You stop hoping.
•    You stop praying.
•    You lose confidence in God.
•    You lose confidence in yourself.
•    You give up.
•    You stop following Jesus.
•    You stop loving your enemies.
•    You stop trusting others.
•    You give in to fear.
•    You start hating.
•    You radiate anger.
•    You become obsessed with revenge.
•    You do to others before they can do the same to you.
•    You rationalize your use of food, sex, or drugs to cope.
•    You justify your affair by deciding that God owes you one dalliance as compensation for what you’ve suffered.
•    You lose it all.
•    Your family moves on without you.
•    You wake up one morning wondering how you became the kind of person you despise.
•    You wonder if God still loves you.
•    You start looking for a way back.
•    You spend the rest of your days pondering what might have been.

This isn’t a game. It isn’t an academic exercise. It ceased being a philosophical discussion three minutes ago.

This is your life, your family, your calling, and your faith.

Your soul can only take so many punches.

If you were a boxer, would the people in your corner be shouting at the referee to stop the fight?

******

Fifteen years ago I had a story I wanted to tell the world about my life.

It was the story of how moved from Texas to the Pacific Northwest to work with a small, struggling church. After a few years, the church doubled in size and then eventually became one of the largest churches in the region and then the country. It was going to be a tremendous story about all the amazing things I saw God do as the church grew.

But before I could tell it, I had to live it. So it never got told.

Eight years ago I had another story I planned to tell someday.

It was the story of how I moved from the Pacific Northwest to work with another struggling church in Oklahoma. The church was recovering from a season of great difficulty and hoping to recapture its former glory. Under my leadership the church experienced a time of great renewal and growth and became the definitive case study for turnaround churches. I dreamed of telling this inspirational story across the country.

But before I could tell it, I had to live it. It is another untold story.

Two-and-a-half years ago I had a story I wanted to tell.

It was the story of how I moved from Oklahoma to plant a church in Texas. It would be the kind of church where people who hate church would feel safe to come and hear the story of Jesus and explore what it means to follow him. It might not be the largest church in the city, but it would have a distinct ministry to those who were interested in Jesus but not church as they knew it. I would get to tell the story of how God blessed our experimental community and used us to break new ground in connecting with those who are far from God. It was going to be a great story and I was going to tell it well.

Again, I couldn’t really tell it until I lived it. So it remains untold.

Regret is the gap between the stories we once dreamed of telling about out lives and the stories we’re actually qualified to tell.

As we get older, we’re forced to come to terms with this gap. When we were young(er) we knew the stories we wanted to tell someday. We envisioned stories about how much we accomplished, how much money we made, how happy our marriage was, and how successful our kids turned out to be.

For the young, just launching into life, the greatest power they have is the stories they plan to tell someday. Wrapped in these stories are hopes, dreams, and ambitions. It’s fun to be around younger people telling stories about themselves set in the future. But sometimes it’s hard to resist jumping in and telling them they may end up with a different story to tell someday.

As the years pass, and as the gap of regret widens, we face a couple of perilous temptations.

One is to get caught up in the past and fixate on how the stories we thought we were going to tell never panned out. Where we once spent our time thinking about our future story, we can easily switch directions and spend our time living in the past and lamenting the passage of time, the making of mistakes, and the cruel twists of fate that rendered us ineligible to tell our dream stories. This is a deadly place to be because those who live in the past have no power to move forward because they’ve cut themselves off from their greatest source energy: the hope of a better future.

The other temptation is to keep conjuring up new stories we want to tell about our lives someday that have no connection to the stories we’ve already lived. Many of these stories are only one fairy-god-mother short of making it into a storybook. Those who live only in the future lack the maturity to move forward because they cut themselves off from their greatest source of wisdom—a disappointing past.

What we need is a vantage point from which we can turn the eye of wisdom to the past and the eye of hope toward the future. This can only be done when we root ourselves in the present moment. In the present, we have access to both the maturity from our past and the energy from our future. Together, they keep us moving forward with realistic hope.

The most powerful tool we have in the present is our life story. Not the story we thought we would live to tell back when were twenty-one or the story we still hope to tell when we’re eighty-one, but the story we’ve lived to tell up until this point.

I still have a story I want to tell with my life. One that I hope I can tell twenty years from now, but I understand something now that I didn’t fifteen years ago. Whatever story I tell in twenty years isn’t going to drop out of the sky as a stand alone narrative. The story I tell someday can only grow out of the story I’ve already lived. The story I will tell someday isn’t set in the future, it’s happening right now. I’m making it up as I go along. As important as it is to have a hopeful story set in the future, the most powerful tool I have at my disposal is the story I’m living right now.

I have a story to tell and I’m sticking to it, because it’s the only story I’ve got. I’m qualified to tell it, because I’m living it.

What story have your mistakes, disappointments, and failures qualified you to tell?

Please don’t ever be afraid to tell it.

1.  Beware of Restaurants with Large Menus

2. A Mean Prayer

3. A Box Full of Ticket Stubs

4. Why I’m Glad I’m My Wife and I Different Senses of Humor

5. A Letter to my Biggest Critic

6. Sydney Saved the Day

7. Waiting for Greatness

8. One Strong Belief

9. Have You Hugged a Zombie Today?

10. My Failure Was Not As Public As I Thought

1. An Emerging Church of Christ (this post is six years old!)

2. 10 Lessons from a Failed Church Plant

3. Late for Church? (four years old!)

4. My Position on Hell (or lack thereof)

5. Church Isn’t Supposed to be Fun

6. Show Me Your Before and After Photos Part 1

7. The Church of CrosssFit

8. Advice to Church Working with Young Preachers

9. Why Churches Make Foolish Decisions

10. Show Me Your Before and After Photos Part 2

In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite Christmas stories from the archives.

The Press Conference

Sitting in the Dark

The Christmas Prophet

Standing there in the hair care aisle looking for a travel size tube of gel, I had a warm, fuzzy moment. I was suddenly in the Christmas spirit, whereas five minutes earlier I was just a guy with a sweet tooth and flat hair.

The feeling didn’t last long. I was back to normal by the time I returned to my hotel room. This isn’t my first trip around the Christmas tree. I know not to get my hopes up.

One reason the holidays are such a struggle for so many is because life rarely delivers what the lyrics in our favorite Christmas songs promise. To hear the songs tell it, the holiday experience consists of a well-sugared yet perfectly behaved family, tuckered out from a quick trip to the local five and dime for some last minute shopping, roasting chestnuts in the glow of a crackling fire, while watching pristine snow fall on a clear, starry night where all is calm, bright, and silent, except for the silver bells.

After singing along for a solid month, this is what we come to expect.

What we get instead are stores packed with deal-hunting zombies, retina-scarring light displays, skyrocketing debt, bratty kids, family “misunderstandings,” and faces twitching and tingling with stressed-out-stressy-stressedness.

That’s why someone decided to tell the truth in “The Twelve Pains of Christmas,” which does a great job of, as the kids like to say, “keepin’ it real.”

Why do we return every year in late November to a genre of music that sets us up for disappointment and depression a month later?

Because every Christmas song contains a kernel of truth just big enough to remind of the best from our past, while describing an ideal future for which we all pine. The world described in holiday music doesn’t exist as a whole. Yet we’ve all managed to snatch enough bits and pieces from this made up world to convince us it’s not a complete fairy tale. The collage of Christmas card moments assembled by the local radio station may be too syrupy to digest in one sitting, but when taken one at a time, it’s easy to see that each moment is based on a true story, or at least on a story that should be true.

• There really is no place like home for the holidays after the first semester away at college.
• Our kids have the power to open a portal to a magical world in which we once comfortably moved.
• Sometimes it snows on Christmas Eve, even in Texas.
• We occasionally catch a glimpse of the Holy One at work in the holiday hustle, bustle, and heartburn and we know that Immanuel is more than a word in a Christmas carol. God really is with us.

Christmas music isn’t describing the world as it is, but as we would like it to be, the way it will be someday.

That’s why I keep singing, even when I’m in Walgreens.

This morning I took my pain from last night’s loss to Scripture. Here is my paraphrase of Romans 7:14-25.

****

We know that rooting for a winning football team is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to the Dallas Cowboys. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, pick a new team, I do not do, but what I hate, giving my heart to the Cowboys, I do. And when I do what I do not want to do, I remember that the Cowboys have five Super Bowl rings!

As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is stupidity living in me. For I know that wisdom itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my foolish nature. For I have a desire to care about a winning team, but I cannot carry it out. For I want to feel good when I watch football, but the misery I do not want to feel—this I keep feeling. As I suffer with every loss, I am happy that Jerry Jones is in pain as well, even though my increasing joy brings me even more pain.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to ignore the Cowboys, I cannot quit them! For in my inner being, I delight in watching winning football, but I see another desire at work within me, waging war against my loyal heart and making me a prisoner to the memory of Tom Landry.

What a wretched fan I am! Who will rescue me from this endless cycle of false hope and self-loathing? Thanks be to Tebow, who sets me free to be a fan of the Broncos!

************

“Hot! Hot! Hot!” Evan was hopping from one foot to another, unable to stand still on the sun-baked concrete.

“Hey doofus, next time bring your water socks and you won’t have to jump around like a dancing monkey,” Carl said.

Carl was two years older than Evan and was his little brother’s self-appointed idiot detector. He made sure Evan was notified whenever he did anything remotely silly or embarrassing.

“Knock it off you guys, I can’t stand to hear another word of it!” their dad said, calling them down for the third time in five minutes.  “One more negative word out of either one of you and we’re all going to go spend the rest of the afternoon floating in the Lazy River.”

It was an empty threat. Both boys knew their dad wanted to ride the Black Mountain Water Coaster just as much as they did. They had been waiting in line for almost an hour. He wasn’t about to walk away without riding the world’s number one rated water attraction, made famous for the way it combined the speed of a roller coaster with the life-like robotics of a ride at Disney World.

The line was an hour long the instant the park opened. On busy days, patrons waited over two hours for a ride that lasted just under three minutes. Yet afterward, everyone always said it was well worth the wait.

That’s why Carl and Evan were standing there with their dad. Their mom had taken one look at the line and told her three boys they were on their own. She was now stretched out by the wave pool, reading a cheap paperback novel.

Their dad was concerned with the dark thunderheads on the horizon. They had appeared out of nowhere, the way they do at the end of a hot Texas day.

“I hope it doesn’t start lightning.” he worried out loud. “They’ll shut the park down as soon as they see the first flash or hear the first clap of thunder. What a waste of time that would be, standing here half the day for nothing.”

“Why would they close the park?” Evan asked.

“Because if lightning strikes while you’re in the water, it fries you, like a chicken.” Carl answered.

“Hmmm. Fried chicken sounds good,” Evan said, “Hey dad, can we stop for fried chicken on the way home?”

“No!” snapped their dad, “We’re getting BBQ at the place we saw earlier.” The clouds were coming fast.

As they approached the final stage of the waiting area, Evan read aloud the warning sign posted over the entrance to the ride, “Do-Not-Stand-Up-During-This-Ride-Violators-Will-Be-Expelled-From-Park.”

“Great,” said Carl, “You can read the words, but do you have any idea what they mean?”

“Better than you,” Evan responded, “You know what they mean, but only if you can get someone else to read them to you.”

Carl pushed Evan into their dad.

“Guys!” he almost shouted. “Seriously, stop it or I will make you go sit with your mom while I ride this thing by myself.”

The boys managed to hold it together long enough to reach the front of the line. They took their places in the foam boat designed to look like a carved out log. Evan in front, because he was the smallest. Carl scooted to the back of the log and made a big deal out of putting as much distance between him and his brother as possible.

Evan looked back at his dad, who was waiting for a boat of his own, and wished the log were big enough for all three of them.  His dad smiled and gave him a thumbs up. After waiting for over an hour and a half, they were finally ready to take their turn on the world’s greatest water coaster.

***

After getting the signal from below that all was clear, the ride attendant pushed them off with his foot and into the jets that would propel them upward. The boys hollered when the current of water shooting from the jets grabbed their log boat and launched them up the ramp on the side of the mountain.

A few seconds later their boat slowed as it crested at the mountain top, which was left open in the shape of a volcano crater. They floated across a shallow pool to a chute descending into the belly of the mountain. The nose of the boat was just entering the chute when there was a blinding flash of light followed by an explosive BOOM! that rattled the mountain. It felt like everything around them was coming apart.

They screamed as their log boat dropped into the darkness beneath them. Then they passed out from fright.

***

When they awoke, they were sprawled out in the bottom of the boat. They heard the sound of a gentle stream moving them onward through the darkness. Carl sat up first and reached beyond the boat to his right. His hand touched a slimy stone wall. He reached out to his left and felt the same. He reached up and his hand hit a ceiling a few inches above his head. They were floating through a straw-like passageway not much wider than their boat.

He felt his brother move against legs. “Evan, are you okay?” he asked.

Evan sat up and said, “What happened?”

“I think the mountain was struck by lightning.” replied Carl.

“Are we okay?” asked his little brother, fear creeping into his voice.

Carl answered, “I guess so. I think we’re in a tunnel.”

Evan whimpered, “I don’t want to go on this ride anymore. I want to go back to dad.”

“It’s too late Evan.” said Carl. “We’re in the middle of it already. Just hang on ’til its over.”

***

Even in complete darkness, they could tell when they emerged from the tunnel into a larger cavern. The boat slowed and the air was cooler. There was an echo from the occasional drip of condensation collected on the ceiling.

Evan was breathing heavily, still fighting back panic. Carl was barely breathing at all.

Evan said, “Carl, are you sure this is a ride?”

Carl said, “I was just thinking about that. Something must have happened when the lightning struck the mountain.”

“Did we travel through time?” Evan wondered.

“No. Don’t be stupid.” snapped Carl. “There’s no such thing as time travel. We must have fallen into a cave underneath the park.”

“Get real, Carl. That doesn’t make any more sense than time travel.” said Evan. “And stop calling me stupid. I make better grades than you do.”

“We’re lost in a cave and you’re thinking about school? Wake up little brother! This is really happening. Remember last year when you went on that field trip to the caves they discovered when they were building the highway years ago? Didn’t they tell you about a guy on a backhoe who was digging a ditch and fell a hundred feet into a cave?”

“That’s what my teacher said,” Evan replied.  “Do you really think that’s what happened to us?”

“You got any better ideas than time travel Mr. Honor Roll?” asked Carl. He reached up and then around the boat and felt for a wall, but touched nothing.

He had no idea how big the cavern was or where they were within it.

***

Evan heard it first. He thought it was a light breeze blowing through the tunnel.

Aaaahhhh.

“Is that the wind?” asked Evan.

“I don’t know.” whispered Carl. “Be quiet or we won’t be able to hear it.”

Aaaahhhh.

Carl said, “That’s not the wind. It sounds more like someone breathing.”

What came next was unmistakeable. It was neither a breeze nor a breath. It was a ragged whisper.

“Smell you.”

“Catch you.”

“Skin you.”

“Eat you.”

Carl groaned and Evan sank down into the boat, trying to hide in the dark.

Their boat suddenly lurched forward as it was captured by a current running through the center of the cavern.

The voice was easier to hear the second time.

“Smell you.”

“Catch you.”

“Skin you.”

“Eat you.”

Carl realized it was getting louder because they were getting closer. He reached forward and found Evan’s shoulder. Evan’s hand came up and grasped Carl’s. They were both too scared to scream.

They felt a bump on their left side. The boat stopped for just an instant and then continued on. Then they felt a bump on their right. The boat slowed but didn’t stop. Carl reached out and touched a slimy wall. They were back in a tunnel, and it was taking them toward the voice.

“SMELL YOU.”

“CATCH YOU.”

“SKIN YOU.”

“EAT YOU.”

The nose of the boat scraped the wall as the current nudged it around a sharp curve. As the boat came around the bend, they saw a faint light seeping into the tunnel from another large cavern.

Whatever was attached to the voice was waiting for them at the end of the tunnel.

It was frantic now.

“SMELL YOU!”

“CATCH YOU!”

“SKIN YOU!”

“EAT YOU!”

The boat picked up speed as they neared the end of the tunnel. Carl and Evan reached up and tried to hold the boat in the tunnel by grabbing something, anything they might be able to hang on to, but their hands slipped across the slimy moss.”

There was no stopping now.

***

The nose of the boat poked out of the end of the tunnel. The boys instinctively wedged themselves into the far corner of the fake log, trying to remain hidden for as long as possible.

They sucked in their breath and held on to each other, terrified of what was waiting for them in the light.

With eyes still accustomed to the dark, they struggled to focus on the scene before them. What they were able to take in, their minds could barely comprehend. They saw a fire burning on the bank of the underground stream that had carried them into this nightmare. Next to it was a little hut made of old tree branches.

Sitting on a rock formation in between the fire and the hut was an old man. He was skinning a dead animal.

As he did his work, he kept saying, “Smell you, catch you, skin you, eat you.”

He hadn’t noticed the boys in the boat who had miraculously managed to hold their silence.

Carl whispered, “Evan, look, he’s cleaning—“

The man dropped the carcass and turned his head in the direction of the boat.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, and took a few cautious steps forward.

The boys screamed, and the man lunged into the stream and reached for them. He stumbled once and then grabbed their boat with both hands and started pulling them toward the fire.

He wore a loin cloth made of dried moss. His hair was long and tangled. The knuckles on his bony hands were covered with scabs. His teeth were jagged and sharp and did little to filter his rotten breath. His ribs looked like knives about to slice through his paper-thin skin. There were nothing but empty sockets where his wild, crazy eyes should be.

The man was shrieking, “Don’t go down the river! You will surely die! Stay with me! Stay with me!”

When Evan saw the man’s face, an unexpected, long-forgotten phrase popped into his mind. It had been planted there years ago by his mother. Thinking of her gave him a jolt of courage. He shouted the phrase she had taught him, “Stranger danger!” and started pounding the man’s bony hands with his fists.

The man tried to swat away Evan’s attack with his left hand. Carl saw the opening and leaned back in his seat and kicked the man in the shoulder with both feet. The man was frail and weak and Carl’s kick was solid. He let go of the boat and fell back into the water.

“Start paddling Evan!”

The boys leaned over the side of the boat and started paddling with their hands, desperately trying to put distance between them and the crazed blind man who was still splashing about and shouting, “Get off the river! You’ll die, you’ll die, you’ll die!”

A few more strokes and they were back in the center of the stream where the current carried them away from the bright warmth of the fire and back into the cool darkness.

As they disappeared into the tunnel, the last thing they heard the blind man say was, “You fools! He’ll never let you pass. He’ll cook you to a crisp.”

The rest was drowned out by the sound of rushing water.

***

This tunnel was really a chute. There was no time for conversation or complaint. They were moving fast, descending deeper and deeper into the earth.

Up ahead they saw a flash of light.  A few seconds passed and then another flash. The flashing continued as they picked up speed.

They shot out of the chute and their boat toppled into the biggest cavern yet, spilling them out of the boat.

Under water, they could see a yellow glow through their closed eyelids. Whatever was flashing above their heads was bright. Then darkness.

They surfaced, gasping for air.

The black cavern once again filled with light.

They couldn’t believe their eyes. Maybe they had travelled through time.

Standing above them, snorting white-hot flames into the cavern, was a red and black dragon.

The boys screamed and ducked back under the water.   The temperature of the water above them was rising fast, so they dove into the cool, murky water beneath them, and swam away from the dragon and his dangerous breath.

Their heads popped up once again into darkness. Evan called out for Carl and the dragon responded with another blast. He was trailing them along the bank of the stream, but was unwilling to follow them into the water

At the far end of the long cavern, they could see yet another tunnel leading into still deeper darkness.

Carl shouted, “This way Evan!”

He lowered his head and swam frantically. Evan was right behind him. When they reached the tunnel entrance, they slammed into a rock wall blocking the way just under the surface of the water.

Lit by another angry breath from the dragon, still in hot pursuit, they could see the water from the cavern pouring over the rock wall and falling into an abyss.

They had to keep moving or the dragon would be close enough to boil them alive with his next blast.

Carl pulled his brother close to him and said, “Evan, we gotta jump.”

Evan knew Carl was right. They had no idea what was waiting for them below, but they were certain of what the dragon would do to them if they stayed.

“Okay,” said Evan, “I’ll follow you.”

Carl scrambled onto the wall, reached back for his brother, and said. “Grab my hand and I’ll help you up.”

Evan found Carl’s hand in the dark and joined his older brother on the wall.

They could hear the dragon on the river bank recharging his flame thrower with a deep breath. Standing there, with water rushing over their feet, they were totally exposed.

The dragon roared.

Carl and Evan jumped into the darkness.

***

Time seems to stand still when free-falling through utter darkness. Carl and Evan had no idea how long or how far they fell.

But it was long and far enough for them to stop screaming and realize that instead of falling, they were actually sliding down a flat rock gradually sloping away from the wall. Their angle of descent was steep enough to make them feel like they were falling, but it was an illusion. Their bodies maintained contact with the slick surface all the way down.

The way they were accelerating and cutting through the thin sheet of water on the rock reminded Carl of the Suicide Slide they had ridden just before lunch.

Evan crossed his legs at his ankles to keep the water from pulling his bathing suit up to his neck.

They were streaking toward another bright light. It was hard to imagine anything worse than an angry dragon waiting for them at the bottom.

The angle of the rock suddenly flattened and Carl and Evan were thrown into the light and dumped into a clear, blue pool of water surrounded by a crowd of onlookers.

***

A young man in a red bathing suit was standing in the shallow end of the pool with water up to his knees. He motioned for them to clear the landing area.

They swam to the shallow water and stood up. They turned and looked at the tunnel behind them and then at each other with disbelief. How could this be? It was the water slide at the bottom of the Black Mountain Water Coaster.

The lifeguard pointed them to the gate where they could exit. Their mom was standing there waiting for them. They ran to her and surprised her with the ferocity of their hugs.

Behind them they heard a whoop as their dad landed in the pool.

He stumbled to his feet and joined them at the gate.

“Dad! How did you get down here? Didn’t the lightning break the mountain?” asked Carl.

“What are you talking about?” said their dad, “There wasn’t any lightning. I was only a few seconds behind you the whole time.”

A confused Evan asked, “Did you see the dragon?”

“Sure I did. How could I miss him? The water squirting out of his mouth was freezing” replied their dad.

“What about the scary old man? Did he grab your boat?” asked Carl, still trying to figure out what just happened.

Their dad said, “Scary old man? The only person I saw was the lifeguard stationed in one of the caverns to make sure the boats kept moving.”

Carl gave Evan a puzzled look and shook his head. Evan shrugged with relief.

Their mom asked, “Well boys, what did you think? Was it worth the wait?”

Finally they smiled, and in unison said, “Best-Ride-Ever!”

“I know, wasn’t it?” said their dad, “Do you want to ride it again? I think we have just enough time.”

Instantly, and again in unison, they shouted, “No!” and started running for the Lazy River.