Every few weeks someone asks me the same question.
“How’s the book coming?”
I usually smile before I answer.
“Almost.”
The funny thing is, I’ve been saying “almost” for nearly three years.
When I first sat down to write Leap of Faith, I honestly thought I knew exactly what I was doing.
After all, I’d been telling people the story for over forty years.
I was fourteen years old.
I jumped out of an airplane.
My parachute didn’t open.
I pulled my reserve.
I survived.
The end.
Simple.
Or so I thought.
The Story I’d Been Telling
For years, whenever someone asked about my skydiving accident, I could tell it in ten minutes.
Sometimes five.
People would lean forward.
They’d ask questions.
They’d shake their heads when I got to the part about the parachute.
Then we’d move on.
I thought I’d told the story.
Looking back now…
I realize I’d only been telling the facts.
Facts tell people what happened.
Feelings allow them to experience it.
There’s a world of difference.
Then I Opened Chapter Four
Three years into writing Leap of Faith, I reached the chapter that should have been the easiest.
The jump.
I’d lived it.
I’d talked about it for decades.
I figured I could write it in a weekend.
Instead…
I spent days staring at a blinking cursor.
Not because I couldn’t remember.
Because I remembered too much.
When I finally began writing, something unexpected happened.
I wasn’t remembering the parachute.
I was remembering the sky.
The Beauty Before the Storm
One paragraph stopped me cold.
I wrote:
“The Oklahoma countryside stretched beneath me in every direction. Fields formed a patchwork of greens and browns. Dirt roads cut across the landscape like ribbons. Small ponds reflected the morning sunlight, appearing from above like scattered pieces of glass.”
Then I just sat there.
Because I realized something.
For more than forty years, I’d never told anyone about that moment.
I’d told people about the malfunction.
I’d told them about the reserve.
I’d told them about the landing.
But I’d forgotten to tell them about the beauty.
As I kept writing, another sentence appeared almost on its own.
“Looking back, I believe God gave me that moment. Not because He removed the danger. Not because He changed what was about to happen. But because He allowed me to see the beauty before the storm.”
I stared at those words for a long time.
Because that wasn’t fourteen-year-old Donnie talking.
That was fifty-eight-year-old Donnie finally understanding what happened to a fourteen-year-old boy.
Writing has a way of doing that.
Sometimes it teaches the author before it teaches the reader.
Counting to Nothing
There is a section in Chapter Four that still gives me chills every time I read it.
It begins with words every skydiver knows.
“Arch-1000.”
“Arch-2000.”
“Arch-3000.”
“Arch-4000.”
“Arch-5000.”
Then comes one word.
“Nothing.”
For decades, I told people my parachute didn’t open.
Those five words explained the event.
They never explained the feeling.
When I wrote that chapter, I wasn’t just remembering the count.
I remembered the hope.
The stubborn belief that the next second would fix everything.
“Come on… Open.”
“Come on… Open.”
I wrote those words exactly as I remembered thinking them.
Not because they sounded dramatic.
Because that’s exactly what a fourteen-year-old boy was saying to himself while falling through the Oklahoma sky.
The Book Changed Me
Somewhere along the way, Leap of Faith stopped becoming a memoir.
It became a conversation.
Not with readers.
With myself.
The boy I used to be started asking questions the man I am today had never taken time to answer.
Why did that moment stay with me?
Why did I remember certain details but forget others?
Why had I spent forty years telling people what happened…
instead of what it felt like?
Those aren’t easy questions.
But they’re honest ones.
And I’ve discovered honest writing usually takes longer than clever writing.
More Than a Skydiving Story
People often assume the book is about surviving a skydiving accident.
It isn’t.
The accident happens in one chapter.
Life happens in the rest.
It’s about fathers.
Brothers.
Faith.
Fear.
Friendship.
Second chances.
Purpose.
It’s about discovering that one terrifying morning in 1982 didn’t define my life.
It introduced me to it.
Why Three Years Wasn’t Too Long
There were days I wondered why the book wasn’t finished.
Now I know.
It wasn’t waiting on another edit.
It was waiting on me.
Waiting for enough years to pass that I could finally understand what that fourteen-year-old boy couldn’t.
Sometimes you need decades before a memory becomes wisdom.
The Last Sentence
People ask when Leap of Faith will finally be finished.
The answer is…
Soon.
The manuscript is nearing completion.
The photographs are coming together.
The chapters are finding their final form.
But here’s something very few people know.
I still haven’t written the last sentence.
Not because I don’t know how the story ends.
I do.
I’ve lived it.
I just haven’t yet found the one sentence that says everything I want readers to carry with them after they close the cover.
Maybe that’s fitting.
Because life rarely gives us perfect endings.
It simply gives us another chapter to write.
Final Thoughts
When Leap of Faith finally reaches your hands, I hope you don’t simply read about a parachute malfunction.
I hope you remember a moment in your own life when everything changed.
Maybe your free fall didn’t begin at 5,000 feet.
Maybe it started in a hospital room.
A courtroom.
An office.
Or with a phone call you never wanted to receive.
Whatever your story may be…
I hope mine reminds you of one simple truth.
Sometimes God doesn’t remove the storm.
Sometimes He simply gives us the chance to see the beauty before it arrives.
And years later…
He gives us the courage to tell the story honestly.
Coming Soon
Leap of Faith: A Summer of Sky & Survival
A true story of fear, faith, resilience, and discovering that sometimes the greatest miracle isn’t surviving the fall—it’s understanding why you survived it.
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