This Life I Live: One Man's Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed It Forever

by Rory Feek

  Now, Terry didn’t know me from Adam. He didn’t know that I was a new Christian, struggling, still trying to find my way with trusting God with my life and my money. He didn’t have to know that, I guess. He just said what was on his heart. Little did he know it was what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it.

  I came home and told Joey the story that Terry had told me and about the joy that I saw in his eyes and in his company. Joey and I talked a long time about it. We weren’t in a position to give away 10 percent of what we had. At the time we only had enough to pay our bills. But we prayed about it and decided to start giving, to begin setting aside the first 10 percent of all we made and giving it to the One who had ultimately given it to us. What He did with it was for Him to decide. We would find a church, or a few of them, and start giving. And so we did.

  That first check was hard to write. It was only a hundred bucks or so, but it put Joey and me in the red, and that was scary. But something about it felt so good. To give. To give without desiring anything in return. The next month we gave again. Then the next and the next. And through it all, we always seemed to have enough. Enough to get by and enough to continue to give. But then something strange began to happen. The pool of money that we were giving from began to grow. Within a year the monthly income that we had used to calculate our 10 percent tithe for the first check was less than what was now our monthly tithe. It was incredible. Not that tithing is meant to be a way to increase your income; it isn’t. But don’t be surprised if it works out that way sometimes. It’s again how God does things. His math. His logic never makes sense on paper, but it works in real life.

  There have been times since then that we have had tougher spells, when money is tight, and there have been periods in our marriage with great abundance. But through it all, Joey and I have tried to remain faithful. To give God what is rightly His. At times, we give even more than what is required, and it has been our honor. We’ve seen the fruit of tithing, and you can’t put a number on it. So don’t even try.

  Just take out your checkbook and give a portion of what you make away. To a church. To a stranger. To someone you love. To someone you don’t like.

  Just give it to God. He’ll use it to change someone’s life.

  And yours.

  Forty-Six

  ON THE SAME PAGE

  Joey and I have rarely ever argued or raised our voices at each other. Even when times were really trying, like in that first year or so of our marriage, we didn’t get mad and yell or argue with each other much. We talked. We reasoned. And we hurt. And we cried some tears. But what we did most was pray.

  Sometimes we prayed together. We held hands and lifted our problems up to Someone and something bigger and smarter than us. And sometimes we prayed on our own. I have no doubt that in those early days Joey spent the time driving to work in her truck in deep conversation and prayer with God about our troubles. Asking, begging Him to help. To help me understand her pain and her to understand mine. And I did my share of praying too. I still do. It doesn’t always look like prayer. It looks more like cooking dinner or mowing the lawn. But it’s still prayer. Me thinking about Him and what it is He wants. Trying to get the focus off of myself and on to where it’s supposed to be—on Him.

  For Joey and me, it was about being on the same page or getting on the same page if we weren’t. And that’s not always easy. It’s almost impossible for a lot of people, I think, because they’re working out of different books. Coming from a place that is different from the other person’s. It makes sense, too, because we all come from different places. Different backgrounds and families. And we have all read different books and been given different bits of wisdom that we try to draw from when we can’t figure things out on our own. Those things are good, but I’m not sure they’ll get the job done when the going gets really tough.

  Joey and I were both clear that there’s only one place and one book that we should be working out of: the Bible. On the pages of the Old and New Testaments were the answers we needed. Whether we knew it or not, almost always, it was our unhappiness with ourselves that made us unhappy with each other. And most of the unhappiness was something spiritual that we were struggling with. We were wrestling with God and taking it out on each other.

  From the very beginning, we understood that we needed Him to be the head of our household if this was ever going to be a home. We knew that left to our own devices we would mess it up. We would ruin the beautiful thing God had given us. My selfishness, or hers, or both, would. But if we could keep things in perspective—that our marriage and the life we were living were gifts—then maybe, just maybe, we could make it and not end up on the bad end of some statistic on marriages today.

  We chose a single verse to live by and love by when we got married: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). It was printed on the napkins for our wedding reception and even deeper in our hearts as we started our marriage. Joey and I took it to mean: “It’s not about what I want; it’s about what He wants.” And not he, meaning me, the man . . . but He, the big He. God the Father. We both knew that the best thing we could do for our marriage and our children was serve Him. If we did that . . . if we did it right, then when people looked at our relationship and saw Joey serving me and me serving her, what they’d really be seeing was us serving Him.

  My wife was always inherently better at this than me. She was the great servant in our house. It was in her DNA. I was a novice compared to her. But Joey inspired me daily to be better. To give more and love more and to think of myself less. She inspires me still. I have a long way to go to catch up to her level of servanthood, but I strive for it.

  And I know it’s possible because I’ve seen it in action. In her.

  Forty-Seven

  BABY CRAZY

  You wanna have a baby? Are you crazy?”

  I’ve always loved babies. Always. My wife knows this about me. We could be at an airport, rushing to get to our gate so we don’t miss our plane, and she might see me veer off and go say hi to a toddler who’s learning to stand by his mama and their bags. Or ask a man how old the baby in his arms is. It’s just how I’m wired. I’m crazy about those little eyes and fingers and toes.

  Joey was exactly the opposite. She felt nothing. When I would see the cutest little face and smile on a baby, she would see diapers and dishes and sleepless nights and pain. Pain from pushing. The only labor my wife wanted to go through is the kind where she is getting her hands dirty to do it. She was scared of babies. I mean, all-out frightened at the thought of having them anywhere near her. In the first ten years we were married, she wouldn’t pick up or hold a baby, even if it was one of her sisters’ children.

  Joey made it clear early in our marriage that we were not going to have more children. She would take my name, be my wife, and serve and love me with all of her heart and soul, ’til death do us part, but she was not going to have a baby with me.

  That worried me. For her. I had spent enough of my life trying to control things and “have it my way” to know that usually whatever it is that we refuse to give to God is probably the one thing He wants from us. I was afraid that might be the case with this for Joey. I told her so, too, a few times. Bad idea. That was a sure way to get into a big argument. Not only was she not going to have a baby; she wasn’t even gonna have this conversation. So I just played along and waited and watched to see what would come of it.

  It was a strange thing, seeing Joey hold on so tightly to something. I knew my wife well, and I knew how much she loved God. And me. So for her to make something so off-limits was hard for me to understand. But I tried to. I didn’t push her. Besides, I already had two kids and knew that I had been blessed so much more than I deserved. I could not, and would not, ask God for more. But that didn’t stop me from joking with Joey about it some. Our bus driver, Russell, and I would kid her about babies and how life would be if we had one, and she would play along until she got tired of playing, and then she’d s
hut it down. Russ and I would know we’d stepped over the line.

  That went on for years. Joey insisting on having her way and not considering any other option. The other strange thing about that was it was literally the only thing about Joey that was out of character for her—inconsistent with who she was and what she was about. Every fiber in her being was about the good things in life. The simple things. Things like faith. And family. She was all about that. But not starting one.

  A few years into our marriage, I started to get the feeling that the baby thing was going to be an issue. Not with me but with God. That there might come a time when He would require her to do the one thing she didn’t want to do. Give the one thing she didn’t want to give. And finally, it happened. Our baby Indiana.

  Our little blessing happened because of all our blessings. Joey came to realize, over time, that God had blessed her and me greatly in our marriage. That all of her dreams had come true and then some. She was living a life blessed beyond her wildest dreams. And how could she withhold anything from Him? From me, if that’s what He wanted? And so she came to me one day in 2012, about ten years into our marriage, and said, “I’m ready.”

  She said she was ready to give God everything. Even the part that scared her the most. Getting pregnant and having a baby. I asked her if she really wanted to have a child, and she said, “No . . . but even more than that, I want what God wants.” She went on to say that it hurt her to think about how greatly God had blessed us and how tightly she had been holding on to her fear and she wanted to face it. To trust Him and give Him all of herself, completely. Once and for all.

  I knew how scary that was for Joey. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted another child. I mean, of course I did, in one way, because I love children and would love to be able to have and raise one with Joey. To share in that together, after all the years of having to do it on my own before she came along. But another part of me knew that I was older. Almost forty-eight then, and set in my ways. A lot of men that age are already having grandbabies. Maybe I was too old to have another little one running around my feet. But none of that mattered, compared to Joey facing her fears. If she could be faithful and trust God in this, I surely could. So I put my worries and thoughts aside completely and said, “Okay, let’s see what happens.”

  Joey got pregnant about a year later.

  I remember the day she told me. It was Father’s Day, and I was working in the milk house on our property. The milking machines are long gone, but I have a desk in there now, and it’s where I write songs and edit video on large-screen monitors. Joey knocked on the door and came in and handed me a Father’s Day card and a little box that was wrapped in a bow. And she was so, so sweet. I read the card and then opened the box. Inside was a little plastic strip that had two pink lines on it. I looked up at her, not believing what I was seeing. “You’re gonna be a daddy again,” she said with a great big smile. “Happy Father’s Day, honey.” And we both broke down crying.

  I pulled her down onto my lap, and we held each other and cried. I couldn’t believe it. Neither could she. A million things went through my mind and hers. We talked and laughed and cried and celebrated, and then we did what we always did for all the big and small things in our life—we got down on our knees and held hands and prayed. We prayed a prayer of thanks and of awe and wonder, and we asked God to keep Joey and the baby safe and to give us hearts full of love and joy for the new season of life we were about to enter. That we would trust Him completely with this child, and with our lives, which were about to change because of this new addition to our family.

  We had no way of knowing the joy and the sadness that moment and prayer would usher in. All we knew was that my wife had been faithful. That she had trusted God, and that would be our plan in the future.

  His will and not ours.

  Forty-Eight

  ALMOND EYES

  She has the prettiest little almond eyes. We named her Indiana. Indiana Boon Feek. And she is a gift, straight from heaven.

  We were in bed one evening not long after we found out Joey was pregnant, and I had my iPad, trying to show her a film called Babies that I’d seen a couple of years before on Netflix, but I couldn’t find it. Instead, we came across a documentary called The Business of Being Born, and we pushed play. An hour later my wife had gone from being scared of having a baby to wanting to have one at home with a midwife and no medicine. It was crazy. And awesome.

  Everything about having a baby at home appealed to Joey. It is the way women have been doing it for thousands of years. It’s all-natural, without chemicals and medicine running through the mama’s or the baby’s veins, and it’s hard. The good kind of hard. Joey liked that kind of struggle. The kind where there is a reason for it. A higher purpose. And the second she heard about and came to understand that she could have a baby naturally, she was all in. And so was I.

  Joey started reading everything she could read about midwives and home births. She wasn’t a reader, but she became one then. She watched every documentary she could find and found websites to learn all she could learn. She found out that the most famous midwifery birthing center in the world was called The Farm, and it was only an hour from our house, in Summertown, Tennessee. She read all about it, how it got started in the early 1970s with a bunch of hippies in buses who had moved there from San Francisco to get back to the land. Back to the way it was. And it appealed to Joey, and to me too. Joey learned all about the women who started it, about Ina May and Pamela and a couple of others, and she found a phone number and left a message, hoping to get Pamela as her midwife. And she did.

  Miss Pamela was about seventy years old by the time she came into our life. She had delivered hundreds, if not thousands, of babies in the last forty years, the natural way . . . the way God had intended it to be, Joey told me, while reading to me one day. Joey and Pamela became fast friends. They were like kindred spirits, and with Pamela by her side, Joey’s fear of having a baby was replaced by excitement. By the anticipation of a beautiful life-changing experience that was coming. Joey looked forward to her monthly visits to The Farm, to have Pamela and the other midwives press on her tummy and listen to the baby’s heartbeat.

  When the big day came, Joey was making breakfast for her mom and me (June had come to visit and help as the baby’s delivery got closer) when, all of a sudden, she excused herself and headed to the bathroom. Within minutes Joey was timing her contractions and writing them down on a sheet of notebook paper. Pamela arrived about an hour or so after the close contractions began, and within the hour Joey had dilated to eight centimeters and was soon ready to have the baby. In checking to see if Joey’s water had broken, Pamela realized that that baby had turned and was about to be born breech. She reassured Joey that she could do it, that this was what she was born to do, and everything was going to be all right. And it was.

  Indiana was born with no complications. All eight pounds and two ounces of her. Pamela said the baby was healthy and strong, and though Joey had dreaded how hard having a baby would be physically, she absolutely loved the birth experience. Many, many times, to whoever would listen, Joey would say it was the greatest thing she had or would ever do in her life.

  Within a week Joey was sitting on the couch beside me with Indy in her arms, saying, “Now I see why people want to have more of these. I would have five more if God would let me.” I was shocked. So surprised by how strong she’d been in facing her greatest fears and, even more so, by how much her heart had melted. How clear it was to see that her greatest fear was becoming her greatest joy. It was a God thing for sure, and we both knew it. Something that I could only understand looking through the lens of faith. How God seems to do things.

  When you die, to self . . . it’s then that you truly live. And for the first time in her life, I could tell Joey was really living. She was complete with that baby in her arms. Something had been missing from her life, and now she knew what it was. A baby. Complete trust in God. For her, they were the same thing
, actually. And I was so honored to watch it all unfold right in front of me.

  I was also honored to be a father again. Papa, actually. I had asked Joey if it would be okay if we could have me be Indiana’s papa, instead of daddy or dad or any other term of endearment. I will always be Heidi and Hopie’s daddy, but I am Indy’s papa. The same, but different. A lot older for sure with Indiana and, hopefully, a little wiser and smarter about what’s important in life and what’s not. I was excited to see where this new phase of our lives would lead. Both Joey and I were.

  First to have love. To be with Joey. And then to have something so good and beautiful. That was more than I ever imagined. A career, and now a baby. I was in total awe of what God had done with my life and ours over the last dozen years.

  I still am.

  Forty-Nine

  LIFE IS COMPLICATED

  This brand-new life, our precious baby girl, had arrived safe and sound and without a hitch. Or so we thought . . .

  We kissed and held each other for a long, long time just after the baby was born. It was the longest, sweetest kiss I think Joey and I ever shared. Pamela put the baby in Joey’s arms, and the world stood still. Heidi, Hopie, June, the midwives, and I knew that this was a special moment. And we all basked in it.

  Within a few minutes they started cleaning up the baby and Joey. I was busy taking pictures and staring at the baby, so I didn’t notice the concern on Pamela’s face at first. I went out into the kitchen and made a few calls to tell Joey’s daddy and sisters and my family that a baby had been born and both she and her mama were doing great. At least, I thought they were . . . but I would soon find out otherwise.