by Rory Feek
In the meantime I’m gonna be here pinching myself, excited about these new beginnings. Excited that Indy will have a schoolhouse that will grow with her. A preschool when she’s four and an elementary school when she’s older and even a high school when and if she’s ready to go. And lastly, a life for her. Or a home for her. The building we’re building is for her. Not just as a school for the next twelve years or so but for forever. Who knows? Maybe one day she’ll want to be a teacher there. Or turn it into a little shop where she sells vegetables she grows in the garden. Or even a house that she wants to live in.
Right now, it’s just the beginning of a dream. But it’s amazing how quickly dreams become reality sometimes and then foster a hundred other dreams. I can’t wait to see the story that this dream is going to tell.
Unfamous
Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.
—John Wooden
I remember walking through the Opry Mills mall with Joey in late winter of 2008. Holding hands, strolling past all the storefronts—just regular, invisible shoppers like everyone else. And she and I talking about, “Wouldn’t it be something if we were famous people and strangers knew who we were and recognized us someday?” I remember everything about that moment and conversation so well—Joey and I both wondering if anything was going to come out of the almost six weeks that we were being sequestered during that time at the Opryland Hotel for the taping of the CMT show Can You Duet? “It would be so neat,” we both said so innocently.
Joey and I both looked back together many times and talked about that day and how within a few months we were being recognized almost everywhere we went. And it has been neat. Sort of. It truly is a “be careful what you wish for” kind of a thing. Because as special as it is to have strangers come up to you and ask for an autograph or a picture, in some ways it’s everything but neat. Instead, it is very complicated. With it comes moments of gratitude for the love and admiration that people show you and also lots of moments of wishing you could still be invisible and no one would make a big deal about you.
For the most part, I have just tried to take it all in stride. Joey did too. We both knew that it is what it is. Part of the deal. Success comes with some responsibility. And so we have tried to just stay thankful for it. That being said, there are definitely times when it can be inconvenient and other times when it can be especially hard. I know, sometimes, my friends or family members get a little annoyed at the fact that it’s hard to carry on a dinner conversation in public with me without strangers coming up to the table, saying, “I don’t mean to bother you, but . . . ,” or asking to take a picture. For the most part, it doesn’t bother me, but it does probably annoy those around me. I wouldn’t be surprised, if at times when friends are making plans to do something, they say, “Let’s not invite Rory to this one,” just because it could be a bit of a hassle. Or, who knows, maybe they just think it’s amazing. People wanting to take pics with a guy who looks like a farmer.
One thing I’ve learned, though, is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle once it’s out. It’s true that getting famous can happen overnight, but getting unfamous isn’t that simple. Yes, the hot flame of fame that burns wild at the beginning fades to a simmer in time, but it’s always there. Even when you think it’s not. There is always someone who will remember you from something . . . or who “can’t put my finger on it . . . but don’t I know you from somewhere?”
I don’t know where the phrase fifteen minutes of fame came from. Maybe it’s just a reminder that it’s a fleeting thing. That it doesn’t last. I read about famous people who hate being famous, and then when the spotlight starts to dwindle, they spend their whole lives trying to get it back again. I hope not ever to be that way. I don’t see fame or fortune as the goal; I see it as only a residual effect of reaching our goals. It isn’t the thing that Joey and I were striving for; it is the thing that comes with the thing we were striving for. So I don’t get too wrapped up in it, or at least I try not to.
There are always going to be people more famous than me. More handsome. Smarter. More successful. I feel for the ones with the incredible fame. The kind that comes with paparazzi and not a moment’s peace. That has to be tough. Joey and I always laughed and said that we are “rurally famous.” Folks drive slowly by the farmhouse and take pics or travel five hundred miles to eat biscuits at our little family restaurant, Marcy Jo’s. It’s not a problem. It’s a blessing.
One thing that we never calculated into the equation, though, is the baby. She is somehow famous too. And that is honestly something that I worry about a little bit. She is little and doesn’t understand why complete strangers know her name and why they want to talk to her and take pictures. I do find myself struggling with that a little bit. With making sure that it doesn’t hurt her in any way. I don’t want Indy to think that this is normal or let it affect who she is and who she can be. I wish Joey was here to help me with this. She would know better what to do. How to help make sure our little girl is given the best perspective and understanding of the life God has given us. She would be worried about it too. I know she would.
I started my first book with a story about how I am famous . . . for loving my wife. And how incredible that is. It is a completely different kind of fame than when Joey and I were just singers and people loved our music. A better fame, in my opinion. I also talked about how if you knew how I grew up and who I was through all of my early years, I would’ve probably been the least likely person to be well known for loving someone.
There’s a chapter about Hopie earlier in this book that challenges my love in a big way, and probably the fame we’ve experienced too. Some people may respect me more for the decisions I’m making, some may think less of me. But like fame itself, it is what it is.
WWJD?
What would Joey do?
I have the bracelet. I actually have a drawer full of them I ordered from Amazon a year or so ago.
From time to time you’ll see me wearing one. Made from a half-inch-wide band of cloth material with the letters WWJD woven through it—that stands for “What Would Jesus Do?” The bracelets have been around for decades. The phrase is originally from a book that I read a dozen or more years ago, and love, called In His Steps, about a group of people in the late 1800s who vowed to not do anything without first asking the question, “What would Jesus do?” It’s a powerful story that has had a strong influence on me.
It is part of why I wear the bracelet. But it’s not really for other people to see. It’s for me. For me to see and remember what’s most important. But as much as I wear the bracelet as a reminder, it doesn’t work. Or, at least, the ones I have don’t work.
It’s frustrating. I find myself thinking ridiculous thoughts like, What would Jesus do . . . I mean, if He had a bracelet that said WWJD and He kept forgetting to pay attention to it?
Sometimes I change the “Jesus” to “Joey,” in hopes that it will personalize the goal more . . . to be more like her, to make each and every moment of my life about God . . . and that will in turn make it about others. But it always ends up the same way. It’s just a bracelet. I never even look down at it.
A few years after the WWJD fad faded away, my cousin Aaron, who’s also our manager, started making red “Godstrong” bands. This was in the very early days of the rubbery plastic bands that have been marketed to death in the last ten years or so. Back then it was just “Livestrong” that was doing it, and my cousin Aaron and his buddy Collin decided that the Livestrong brand missed the mark to them, that their strength didn’t come from inside themselves but from the One who made us all. So they had this idea and made up five thousand of them. They thought they’d probably just end up giving them away as Christmas presents, but, instead, the bracelets took off like wildfire in Christian retail stores. That first order of five thousand became five hundred thousand, then a million or more.
I, of course, was an early adopter.
I loved what they were doing and wanted to support them in their endeavor. Besides, my WWJD had lost its mojo, and I needed something more powerful to help me to be the man I wanted to be. This one even had a Bible verse . . . Ephesians 6:10–11, about being strong in the armor of God. Unfortunately, the new bracelet might have been changing hundreds of thousands of lives around the country and world, but mine was staying the same.
It’s been ten years since then, I’ll bet, and I still wear that red bracelet most of the time. Not for its magic juju but as a reminder that the magic potion is in me. It’s in all of us. Or, at least, it can be.
I have had moments when I have felt closer to being Christlike—as a follower, I mean. Once, around 2000 or 2001, I remember this feeling inside when I was walking closer with Him. Somehow, it wasn’t just a feeling; it was a tangible thing. Real. And the impact it had on me and everyone around me was almost shocking, actually. In a good way.
But like the color of the letters on that first fraying WWJD bracelet I had, that feeling began to fade, at least, in comparison to what it was early on. Soon that bracelet came apart and fell off my hand, and I found another and then another. But it’s never the same.
I finally figured out that the magic wasn’t in the four letters or in the bracelet; it was in me. And it’s still in me. I just have to remember it. I believe that God gives us everything we need in life when we need it. And so I am probably already equipped with the strength and power to be who He and I want me to be.
I just need to do it. Like the Nike commercial. It’s probably that simple.
I remember riding down the road with my friend Danny Darst one time, talking about faith and where I was with mine. We were in his van, and I went on speaking for twenty minutes or so about how I wanted to get closer, go deeper with my relationship with God. To try to be more like Him.
When we got in the driveway, Danny turned off the van and just sat there listening to me as I went on telling him about how this time I was serious and was really trying to be more like Jesus. When I was done, Danny just calmly said, “It’s never going to happen, pal.” Very matter-of-factly.
I, of course, told him, “No, I know it’s never gonna happen, but I want to try.” Again he just told me that it’s not gonna happen. And we went back and forth like this for a while until he finally stopped and pointed at our farmhouse and the barns and the new truck in the driveway and said, “Christ had nothing. Look around . . . you got too much stuff.”
Now, to me, that is a true friend. The truth hurts, big-time. But it is still the truth. The conversation went a whole other direction from that moment on. And I have constantly thought about what he said. And, at times, I get rid of things, trying to get closer to having nothing. But I suck at it. Stuff continues to accumulate. And I continue not to be like Christ. I would like to think those things are unrelated, but they probably aren’t. It is a never-ending struggle. But then, I don’t think he was just saying that it’s money or material things that are the problem; it is more about the worship of the money or the things. And those things are hard to separate. Very hard.
Once Upon a Farm
We are all living somewhere between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after.”
Buying this farm on pretty much a whim . . . that one foolish decision changed everything.
It set the tractor wheels in motion for me to build a beautiful home and wonderful life. To fall in love and be part of a bigger dream than I could’ve ever imagined. Then to have another child and, ultimately, learn how to open my hands and trust in God when nothing makes any sense at all.
The story that has unfolded since we moved to this farm has been nothing short of incredible. Filled with magic that even Walt Disney and his team couldn’t conjure up. And all these years later I see the magic in it still.
It is not just about what has happened since we moved here; it is about what is happening today. How we planted ourselves in this community and on this land that was once someone else’s, and the seeds of hope in our hearts have taken root and grown wild. And like the golden heads of a wheat field, some of our seeds have blown into other people’s yards and fields and lives, and their dreams have taken root and grown wildly too. And from time to time the wind has shifted, and the seeds from their fields have blown into ours and affected our path and our future. We are a part of their lives, and they are a part of ours.
And on this hallowed piece of ground, we have sat and pondered the meaning of life. And been buried beneath that same spot, pondering the meaning of life still. We have seen years of severe drought when nothing was happening with my wife’s career, and all hope was nearly lost—and in what seemed like a moment, it turned into a bountiful harvest, filled with Grammys and other fruit of the greatest accomplishments you can make in our profession.
All of it on this same piece of ground.
It is constantly evolving and changing, like the living room in our house that has been a bedroom, dining room, den, then a bedroom and a dining room again, and a living room again and again. Never satisfied, it isn’t meant to be something; it’s meant to be many things.
I think, as people, we all are very much like all the rooms in this old house; it is not set in stone what we are. There is only what we have been and what we might be someday. The same way with the barns and the land. The Hardison and the Blalock families used the barns and land for one thing, and we use it for another. Our children may actually find a better purpose for it than we have.
And my hope is that as good of a story as it has been that has unfolded here . . . that one day, the story their lives write here might be better. Even more beautiful and inspiring.
Lifesteading
Plant cucumbers, corn, and beans . . . and pray that love grows.
If you try to look it up in the dictionary, you won’t find it because life-steading isn’t actually a word. But it is a thing. Or at least it is to me. It is what I believe that we have done here on our farm, my wife, Joey, and I, over the past fifteen years. That I do naturally. Without knowing that I do it.
It is about planting yourself in the soil where you live and growing a life you can be proud of. A love that will last. And a hope that even death cannot shake. Like tending a garden filled with vegetables, it, too, requires preparing the heart’s soil and planting the right seeds at the right time and watering them and keeping the weeds of this life and the bombardment of the culture from choking out what you’re trying to grow.
For us, the harvest has been plentiful. Beyond our wildest imaginations. Dreams that seemed impossible in years past materialized right before our eyes.
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been disappointments and surprises. Some a lot of people already know about, and some I share in the pages that fill this book. But just because something different than you had imagined has grown doesn’t mean that it isn’t beautiful. It is.
The world around our farm is changing fast. With the Internet and technology and all that is possible today, it sometimes feels like culture is a fast-moving river that has swept us all up in it and is carrying us into the future. And though we try to swim against the current, and at times we will make some headway . . . we, like everyone else, ultimately, just have to hold on and try to stay afloat as the current takes us around life’s bend and embrace what is waiting here. And though a part of me would love to, there is no way to go back to where we were before. Not really.
I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to the past. I have a 1954 Oldsmobile 88 in the garage that I climb into and pretend as I’m pulling down the driveway that it’s taking me back in time. Back to a world that was better. A life that was better. And maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. It doesn’t really matter. Because we are where we are. So far not GM or Ford or NASA or Apple or anyone else has figured out how to take us back in time. So the best we can do is bring some of what seems like the good stuff from the past with us into the future. The values and principles that are timeless, even though they see
m out of date to much of the culture today. Things like honor and respect and faith and hope. These things never go out of style.
Almost every week I meet a young person or family who has bought a couple of acres of land or who are hoping to. Longing for something better, more satisfying than what the world is telling us to want. And it’s encouraging and inspiring to me. Some of them have visions to live off the land, the way my wife did. Some just want another option than what’s available to them. Something less but more.
I can relate.
In the fall of 2013, Joey and I decided that we were going to take all of 2014 off and homestead. We had a baby on the way and wanted to make sure we were completely present for the new chapter of our lives that we were about to begin. Our plan was just to simplify our lives and live off the land . . . with our cow and chickens and the six and a half acres that comprised our farm at the time. And in some ways we did simplify. We stopped playing music and doing shows, and we just stayed home and focused our lives on the land and community that God had planted us in. But as we moved toward simplifying, God started adding complications.
First, it was a complication that came about after Joey delivered our little girl, Indiana, in a home birth and had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency surgery. Then it was the news that our baby had Down syndrome. Six weeks or so after that, it was a diagnosis of cervical cancer. It seemed that though our plans were to simplify, God had different plans. Ours were, ultimately, about what we wanted in our lives, and His, of course, were about what He wanted in our lives. What He felt we needed, I guess.
It’s funny, though, that our plan to take a year off included homesteading. That’s a word that a lot of folks aren’t even familiar with. They might’ve heard it at some point in a junior high history class about pioneers in the bygone days who made the trek out west somewhere to claim a piece of the prairie. But it isn’t something they long to do or even something they are aware is even a possibility. But we knew it was.