In his new book, This Life I Live: One Man’s Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed it Forever, country singer, producer, filmmaker, blogger and now author Rory Feek tells the incredibly poignant and personal story of the loss of his wife Joey, who died in March 2016 while battling cancer. He also details his own rural upbringing as well as ups and downs in the life of his family and how he is managing life without Joey, who would have turned 41 this past September.
Read on for an excerpt from the book.
Chapter Two: Stronger
I don’t cry like I used to or hurt like I did when I was a younger man. I’m more stable. Stronger. Finally. When others don’t or can’t hold it together, somehow I do. I’m not sure why or when that started. I wasn’t always like that. Far, far from it. I was an emotional mess most of my life. Crying and falling apart for the smallest of things. Most of them, things of my doing. Or things that were just in my head. I’m not like that anymore. At least not as far as I can tell.
We had a perfect at-home birth that, a few hours later, turned into a horrific surgery for my wife and a diagnosis of Down syndrome for our baby daughter. A few months later my siblings and I watched our mother pass away right before our eyes. And the year after that, I held my wife’s hand as cancer took her, and I had to pick up our two-year-old daughter, Indiana, and somehow go on. But I have been strong. I have cried very few tears, especially in the moments where the pain lives or is learned. I have found myself crying in other moments. When I’m by myself—thinking, remembering, wondering. But all in all, I have mostly felt peace. My wife was the same way. She was strong in her faith and trusted God when difficulties would come our way. Just as I do. I don’t know why. Or where I learned that or became that. I know that she is a lot of why I am me. Joey. And God. God that was in Joey. I could see Him in her. In her eyes and her smile, even when it hurt to smile. In her tears and her laughter, He was there. Her love strengthened my faith. And brought hope. Always, always hope.
It’s a wonderful difference compared to how I used to be, but it’s also unusual for me. Most of the people around me break down easily and often. Hope comes and goes like the wind. My sister Marcy almost didn’t make it through my mother’s passing. Her grief was so great. I couldn’t relate to her. I tried to. I listened and was there for her and did my best to comfort her. But I didn’t cry like she did or feel her pain. My view of our mom dying was compassionate but in a realistic way. People pass away. It’s a part of life. It’s hard and terrible, but it’s gonna happen to all of us. I could somehow keep in perspective that Mom was seventy-one, and that’s a long life. She smoked, right up until the end, and this happens a lot when that happens. But still, even with that, I wonder if I should be crying or hurting more. I don’t think I should. Nothing in me says that anything’s wrong. I don’t feel like I’m carrying a huge amount of weight or that I’m bottling up my emotions or anything like that. I just feel like I now have a different perspective from what I had most of my life. I have peace. Because of my faith. And finally opening my hands and turning my life over to God. Believing in a higher power and trusting that He has a bigger plan. One that I don’t understand. That I can’t understand this side of heaven.
Taken from This Life I Live by Rory Feek. Copyright © 2017. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. www.thomasnelson.com.
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