Rory Feek On Late Wife And Raising Daughter With Down Syndrome: "God Doesn't Make Mistakes"


Country singer Rory Feek opens about what he went through when his wife, Joey passed away from cancer in 2016.

Even the strongest people are shaken and often broken with the loss of a spouse. This is especially harder when the two of them have had children together. It's a crushing and heavy blow that occurs when the realization that your primary support system to share your journey with, in life, is no more. Yet, more often than not, the surviving parent usually somehow pulls through and carries on, for the sake of the child or children. That's what it's all about... putting aside one's own struggles for the sake of others, especially little ones. 

Country singer Rory Feek was in a harrowing place when his wife, Joey passed away from back in 2016. He was all alone and had to raise his young (then two years old) daughter Indiana all by himself. Growing up without a mom is terrible, and there was an insane amount of pressure on Feek to take care of the little girl, but he took upon the task with all his heart, and the experience has shaped him to learn so many things since then. 



On his blog, This Life to Live, Feek documents the life he shares with his daughter, Indiana in a post called Crib Notes. He writes, "As I sit down to write this morning, Indiana is stirring in her crib. She is starting the process of waking up and beginning her day... and though I've been up for a while now, beginning mine too. Watching her sit up, look around, then roll back over... and listening to her talk to herself and her hands, I'm reminded what a gift she is.  What a gift she's been to me. And to Joey." But Indiana isn't just any gift — she is a special one because she is a baby with Down Syndrome.



Feek cannot be stopped from loving his beloved daughter any less. "God doesn't make mistakes. Indiana is not less than any other child.  Different is not less. Having down-syndrome doesn't make her life any less meaningful than someone else's or her dreams or feelings any less important.  Not as a child and I suspect, not in the years to come when she grows to be an adult."



"As I've been spending this summer working on Joey's film, I have been given the gift of seeing our lives unfold once more, right in front of me - day by day and week by week - but this time with hind-sight. With perspective. I was able to watch the story as it was happening, but also be outside of it, because I already knew how it ends.  Or more truthfully, how it begins again two years later with just Indy and I," he said in his blog post.



Though Feek admits to missing his wife terribly, he has still let this experience make him mature and stronger. As he raises little Indiana on his own, he remembers things about Joey that help him carry on the journey in full care of their precious daughter. 


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