As Lisa’s shaky legs stepped onto the zip line platform forty feet above the ground, she froze. “I can’t do this,” she whimpered. I reminded her how courageous she had been when she climbed to the top of our tower just a few minutes earlier. Now it was time for the reward—a 300-foot zip line ride to the ground. Lisa peered over the edge and swallowed hard. Her friends cheering from below looked so small from here. She looked up at me again. “Seriously, I can’t do this. I’m to

Almost everyone looks nervous when they reach the top of the fifty-foot tall Upward Tower, but this guy was different. This was not simple anxiety from being out of his comfort zone. This was paralyzing fear. I could see it in his eyes. Immediately my demeanor shifted from casual joking to calm reassurance, hoping to encourage the 11-year-old boy that he was safe. As I transferred him from one safety line to the other, I asked him for his name. At first he didn’t reply. My vo