by Rory Feek
We had some things happen when I was young. Things that weren’t good. I had. All of us kids had. Experiences with neighbors or strangers that shouldn’t happen to kids. But those were hard times, and there was really no one around to watch us and keep us from such things. Mom was busy trying to make a living and find her own self-worth, so we had to figure out a lot on our own. I don’t blame anyone, and I don’t let any of those things affect me or use them as an excuse for who I am or who I’m not. But I know they left scars. Inside. Deep down. Wounds that you can’t see with your eyes. Gaping holes in my soul that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to fill with sex and booze and fame. You can have all those things and still be empty. I know. I’ve been there.
My second time was better than the first. And a hundred thousand times worse.
She was married. To a friend of mine. I was home on a weekend pass from the service, and some buddies and I stopped by to visit them. My friend wasn’t there, but his wife and their two kids were. Little boys, around two and four. She asked us to stay awhile and visit. Her husband was on a job a few hours away and was gone for weeks at a time. She was bored and lonely and would love some company. We thought it was a good idea. But it wasn’t.
Everyone was drunk. Me included. And then it happened. By the next morning, she and I were sitting at their kitchen table, and she was asking about the future—what we were gonna do. We. She said “we.” No girl had ever included me before. I said I didn’t know. She told me that we should come clean, that we were in love and should let everybody know it. I was still drunk. Exhausted. Reeling from what had happened the night before. It had felt like love, compared to the time with the girl and the smoke in the car. Maybe it was. I looked up and saw my friend’s wife looking at me like she cared about me. I said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
Over the next six months or so, I proceeded to break my family’s hearts and hers into a thousand little pieces. And that man. My friend. He cried a million tears for his wife and his babies, who left him to be with me.
In the end it didn’t work out. She woke up one day a thousand miles away in an apartment with me and realized that she didn’t love me. She still loved him. My friend. Who was now a long, long way from being my friend. And so, with tears streaming down my face, I took her and those little boys to the airport and watched as they boarded a plane to try to go back and resume the life they had. Meanwhile, mine had been wrecked.
I wouldn’t get over that for a long time. They were gone, but the truth of it stayed in me. Not only what happened but also who I was—that I was the kind of person who would do that to someone else. I hated myself for it.
Thirteen
FORGIVEN GREATLY
I’ve spent my whole adult life hiding this story. Being embarrassed and ashamed of it. Now I’d be ashamed not to tell it.
I have to tell it if I want the chance to tell you how it ended. To tell you about being forgiven and why it has become easy for me to not hold grudges, to let things go, and forgive others. That’s actually what the story is about. The part where I did everything so wrong, as it turned out, was just the beginning of a bigger story. Just the setup. For years I thought that was where it ended—the part where I was at the airport in tears, facing the truth that I had ruined my life and some other people’s. But it wasn’t.
There was going to be more. Or, at least, there could be. A different ending. There always can be a different ending to the story you’ve been telling. You just have to follow that still, small voice inside of you. And do something to change it in order to write about it.
I also have to tell you about this story so you can understand how incredible it is that I am famous. Not just famous. But famous for loving my wife. It’s an incredible thing to be known for that, but it’s even more incredible knowing where I came from, knowing what I could’ve been known for. That is the power of change. Of God. Of the amazing truth that in the blink of an eye, He can take a world-class loser and turn him into a world-renowned lover of someone, if you put your trust in Him and follow where He is leading. I am humbled by this story, by how it ends . . . actually, how it is still unfolding. That is why I remain in awe of Him and what He has done in my life and why I try hard to be an open book in sharing our story. Because I know what He’s done in my life, and what He delivered me from.
It was 1994 or 1995, I think. About twelve or thirteen years after that scene at the airport. I was back home, visiting family. My kids were maybe eight and ten years old, and I woke up one morning thinking about my friend, about that time, about what I had done. I hadn’t thought of that incident in years. I had moved on, and life had turned out pretty good, overall, but still I carried it with me, down deep, and it was always there. On this particular morning, the memory of that time, those mistakes I made . . . wasn’t just down deep, it was upon me. Everywhere. I could feel it calling from inside of me. It wanted out.
Something in me was aching for resolution. But how? Some things can’t be fixed. No amount of time or prayer could undo what I’d done. I knew that. But still, something inside me said I had to try. Anything. Even if it killed me.
Which I knew it just might.
I told some friends that there was something I needed to do, and I was going to be gone for a while. I asked them to watch my kids for the day, and I got into my old ’56 Chevy and started driving north. I drove and drove, not really sure of what it was that I was doing or what lay in store. I didn’t have a plan. Not really. Just show up. That was my plan.
My mind relived that time over and over again as I drove. I tried to rewrite what had happened. Tried to make it so we decided not to stick around and keep my friend’s wife company that night. I tried to imagine myself as stronger, able to say no instead of saying yes in the middle of the night and then again the next morning. But those were lies. That wasn’t the real me. I was the one who had said yes. I was the one who had ruined my life and everyone else’s.
I remember, as I drove, looking in the rearview window at a train in the distance behind me. The long train was running on a track parallel to the road I was driving down. I thought I was making good time, trying to keep the train behind me, but that beast of a machine caught up with my car, little by little. Ten minutes later, I was looking across the passenger seat at that massive Missouri Pacific engine right beside me. The engineer inside looked at me strangely out of his window. The Midwestern prairie was just beyond, stretching out for what seemed like forever. I tried to speed up, but the train did too. And coming down a hill, when I slowed down to let it pass, it slowed down and stayed right with me.
It was like time was standing still. Telling me something. Maybe that my past had caught up with me. That no matter how hard I’d try to ignore it or stay ahead of it, it was bound to catch up. To be with me. Like that locomotive, the past, it seemed, was bigger and more powerful than me.
At around seven p.m., I pulled into the little town where I’d heard my friend was now living and drove down the broken cobblestone streets until I found a phone booth. I looked up his name in the phone book and dropped a quarter in the slot. I dialed the number and listened to the ring. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest. He didn’t answer.
His wife did.
“Can I talk to your husband?” I asked.
There was silence. A dozen years had gone by. Had she recognized my voice? There’s no way, I thought. This was long before the days of cell phones and caller ID. Besides, I was on a pay phone. I wondered what was going through her mind.
“Sure,” she said. “Hold on a minute.”
I thought about hanging up, getting in my car, and getting the hell out of there. But I’d come so far. I was scared to stay on the end of the line but even more scared to hang up. I heard an old familiar voice say hello.
“It’s me. Rory,” I said, struggling to get words to come out. Silence again.
“Yeah, I know,” he answered.
“I’d like to talk to you if I could,” I told him. “I’
m in your town. At a pay phone.” More silence. And then even more.
“Ernie’s,” he said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” And then he hung up.
I looked across the downtown street from where I was standing on the corner, and nearby was a little beer joint with a sign above it that said Ernie’s. The neon words Cold Bud Light Sold Here were blinking in the window just below. I walked in, found a seat at the bar, and ordered a Coke. There were only a half-dozen people inside . . . a couple in a booth, two guys shooting pool. My knees were shaking almost as bad as my hands.
What was gonna happen when he got there? I had no way to know. He hated me, and this was his chance to set me straight. Was he going to hit me? Probably. Maybe he’d bring a gun and shoot me. I hadn’t thought about that. I didn’t want to die. Yet I knew I deserved it, whatever happened. What if he asked me about that time? What was I gonna say? I couldn’t change anything or make anything right. This was a big mistake, I thought. I am an idiot. I should just leave.
A thousand thoughts were running through my mind as I heard that front door open and I saw him walk in. Still handsome. Older now but strangely the same. The look on his face said he wasn’t happy. He was gonna kill me. My heart started racing.
“Stand up,” he said. I didn’t move. I was frozen. My limbs had locked up.
“Stand up, I said,” he repeated. This time a little louder. The two guys playing pool stopped and turned our way. This was it. I was a goner. I stood up and braced myself for what I knew was coming. But it never came. Instead, he did the one thing I never in a million years thought he would do.
He smiled.
And a tear came rolling down his cheek as he opened his arms and said, “I’ve missed you.”
The man who should’ve killed me . . . hugged me instead. He put his arms around me and told me that he loved me.
I didn’t know how to respond. What had just happened? How could he do this? Why wasn’t he mad? Pissed off that I had stolen his wife and that part of his life from him? It didn’t make any sense. But I soon realized why. He didn’t hurt me because he was bigger than that. Because love, real love, is bigger than that. Bigger than hurt. Bigger than pain. Even bigger than fear. And somehow, he knew it.
No, he chose it.
Instead of punching me and cussing me out, he bought me a beer. He sat down on a barstool beside me and pulled out pictures of his kids. Those two little boys I had known years ago were handsome teenagers now, and in the pictures there were now a couple more kids too. He talked about how well he and his wife were doing, how he was helping coach their baseball teams, and how he’d been at the same job for quite a few years. And then he asked about my girls, Heidi and Hopie, and I pulled out my wallet and showed him pictures of them. I told him I had moved to Nashville and was writing songs. He was genuinely excited and proud for me.
He and I talked a long, long time. And he never once brought up what had happened back then or said one thing to make me think he was upset with me. Not one. As the evening wore on and he downed the last of a beer, he stood up and said he’d better be getting home, that he had to work in the morning. I grabbed his arm. I couldn’t hold it back anymore. My tears started falling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so . . . so . . . sorry.” I was sobbing now. I didn’t care who saw. Maybe it was the beer. Probably not. It was, more than likely, guilt. And shame. Years and years of it, of carrying it around.
“I know you are,” he said. And he hugged me again. “Me too,” he said. “Me too.”
And that was that. The unforgivable was forgiven.
That is the closest thing I know of to being able to understand what it means that Christ died for me. It was as if my sins had been wiped clean and I didn’t have to carry them around anymore. The weight that had been so heavy was lifted. I still had the memories of what I did, the facts. But only as a reminder of what not to do in the future. Who not to be. And that part of it would be a good thing.
I drove back that night a changed man. I had witnessed something. Something from someone who was on a higher plane than what I was used to. I knew it was a moment I’d never forget. And I knew that I wanted to be like that. Like my friend from years ago, who is my friend still. To be able to face something that should make you angry and instead feel compassion. And love.
I didn’t know it then, but I would someday have the woman I love taken from me. Against my will. And my family would be forever changed. I would have the chance then to choose to take a higher road too. To choose love and forgiveness instead of hate and anger, while a million people around the world watched. How I would deal with it, how I am dealing with it now. They would see something in me that was unusual and inspiring, I would learn later.
But the forgiveness and understanding that I have now came from my friend first. From God, ultimately, even before that. Yes, I have been forgiven greatly. Many times over. And so I must forgive greatly and trust that God has a greater plan in store than the one that I can see. I must remember that the story isn’t over yet. It is still being written.
Day by day, scene by scene, moment by moment. As I am writing this story about my past, He is writing the story of my future.
And yours.
Fourteen
MARINE BIOLOGY
Eleven weeks of basic training changed me. Forever.
How could it not? I’d never really been away from my mother or most of my siblings. Getting on that bus, then my first airplane, then another bus that led to the front gate of Parris Island—a legendary peninsula on the South Carolina coast where marines were either made or broken—the apron strings were ripped off mama’s boys by screaming drill instructors who had stripes on their arms and fire in their eyes. The staff sergeant boarded the bus, then at the top of his lungs ordered us off, using profanities that struck immediate fear into the hearts of me and fifty other recruits with sleep in our eyes and peach-fuzz on our chins. It was clear: my childhood was over. Thank God.
I hated boot camp. And I loved it. Both at the same time. Probably the same way most boys have for the last two hundred years or so that the Marine Corps has been in existence. I was six feet two inches tall by then and skinny as a rail. One hundred and forty-four pounds. The recruiter said if I’d been a single pound less at my height, they wouldn’t have let me in. Those eleven weeks, plus the next eight years of service to Uncle Sam, put some weight on me. Some muscle. And made me stronger in a thousand other ways too.
When I got out of boot camp, they flew me home. Back to Kentucky. My mom was at the airport to pick me up. I knew she was proud to see me in my short hair and uniform. We still didn’t have a phone at home, so I had only been able to write letters. That made the separation even harder but better, probably. I was changed. I knew it. Mom did too. I remember walking through the airport, looking at all the families and lovers and children and feeling strange. Unable to understand how life for everyone else in the world had continued on the same while so much had changed for me. But it had.
Mom’s old Duster was still running, barely. And she had a new boyfriend. So we headed to meet him at a truck stop on the Western Kentucky Parkway. I remember it was March, and it had started to snow—and then it happened. With the large Flying J sign a half mile ahead, Mom’s car started to sputter, then shut down. I could hear the sound of a rod knocking, then a loud backfire as we steered the car onto the shoulder. Then we just sat there. Trying to figure out what to do next. I laugh about that day now, but I know we weren’t laughing then. It was just another bit of hard luck in a life filled with nothing but bad luck for Mom. We walked the half mile through the snow to the truck stop and left the car there and never went back for it. Mom knew there was no way she could afford a towing bill, let alone the cost to fix it. So why bother? She just moved on and left that broken part of her in the past.
I did the same thing in a lot of ways. In the service I met guys from all over the country who were in the same boat I was and learned that there was a
great big world out there, and I wanted to see it, to be a part of it. And soon I was. I spent a year in aviation electronic school at a naval base just north of Memphis, then was shipped out to California. Then to South Carolina, Japan, and even Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, for my last couple of years. I worked on reconnaissance camera systems for F-4 jets and later F-18s. It was a good job, and I was pretty good at it. I excelled in the service, going from private to sergeant in only a few years.
Near the end of my four-year enlistment, I was offered the chance to reenlist. So I did. Not because I wanted to make a career of the marines but because I needed a new PA system to play music. Seriously. By then I was playing music in some clubs near the base in Beaufort, South Carolina, and needed new gear for the bigger places I was getting the chance to play. That, and I was married by then and had a little one on the way. They offered me twenty-five thousand dollars to sign up for another four years, and I couldn’t pass it up. It was more money than I or any of my people had ever seen before, and on top of it, I had no idea yet how I was going to get to Nashville and, if I did, how I would survive once I got there. That was 1985: it would still be ten years and two kids before my crooked path would lead me to Tennessee, where I wanted to be.
I met my older daughters’ mother in Garden Grove, California, in January 1985. I was stationed at El Toro and had a fake ID that some buddies and I had bought at a swap meet nearby. On weekends we would go to a little dance club for fun, and she was there one night. Pretty as a picture and sweet as could be, she was only eighteen and in her last year of high school. The next day I pulled my car into the drive-through at the Burger King where she was a shift manager. By the time she handed me a chicken sandwich and my change, she and I were pretty much inseparable. We were married that fall, and Uncle Sam shipped us to South Carolina soon after. We rented a nice house on Lady’s Island, about ten miles from the base where I was stationed, and within a few months we learned she was pregnant.
