My life is very ordinary. On the surface, it is not very special. If you looked at it day to day it wouldn’t seem like much. But when you look at it in a bigger context, as part of a larger story, you start to see the magic that is on the pages of the book that is my life. And the more you look, the more you see. Or at least, I do.
Rory Feek
Rory Feek is a musician, a songwriter, a filmmaker, an author, and a believer. He is husband to the late Joey Feek and father to three girls. Rory’s hope in writing his book This Life I Live is to explain how mundane things in life can actually intricately build to be important, life-changing things, which he does by telling his own life experiences. Most importantly, he writes so that others might come to know Jesus by hearing his story.
This Life I Live is a book about Rory’s Feek’s life. Many know Rory as Joey’s husband, but Rory begins his book at his beginning: his childhood. He first walks readers through his background, including his upbringing, his family, and his years of childhood. Rory’s family moved often, much because of their finances, and he explains that his mother worked hard, but with all the mouths she had to feed and with no help to do it, they were always one step ahead of the creditors.
That’s one thing about Rory’s book; he is incredibly and unashamedly honest. He doesn’t skirt around his stories of heartbreak, discomfort, or mistakes. Rather, he tells who he is with honesty so that others might learn from his story.
Rory admits to being a man who loves romantic ideals and also has somewhat of a hazy memory, but he tries to tell his story to the best of his ability. He tells many stories of times when he or when others he’s been close to did the best they could with what they had at the time. And he tells these stories with forgiveness in his heart, having learned the significance of God’s forgiveness. He describes sad stories of gifts given but then taken away when he was a child, joyful stories such as how he got his first guitar (from his Uncle Rod), and amusing and heartwarming stories like the time he got in trouble with a train. But, like many of the lessons he imparts to his readers, Rory believes that we “all get the chance to be someone else, to start over and put the past behind us.” He says that “God gives us another one every day.” That fact is something he loves.
Rory lives about an hour south of Nashville, but he considers Nashville home. After Rory explains how he and his two daughters came to Nashville, he speaks of his successes and failures in the music industry. Again, Rory is honest in saying that God worked on his character for quite some time and that who he was changed over time. He began searching his heart to discover integrity. And when the time came, he didn’t just ask Jesus to come into his heart and change him; he explains that he took responsibility for it and did his part. He repented. Rory gives a powerful, true-to-the-core explanation of repentance, saying that he didn’t just say he was sorry; he turned from his old ways.
Then, Rory gets to the sweet story of how he and Joey met. They had somewhat of a whirlwind courtship and married quickly. Their early days of marriage weren’t easy, but they grew together and learned the importance of putting the other person first. Rory tells stories from their day-to-day life and explains the important lessons he learned from Joey, which now, because of this book, the whole world is learning as well. For example, Joey was in charge of managing their finances, mainly because she was better at it. (Again, Rory is honest in saying he wasn’t the best with the money.) Joey didn’t see nor want to see money as a means of power or happiness. She wanted them to live with what they needed. She didn’t believe emptiness to be something money could fill, nor did she want their kids to see money as a problem-fixer.
I enjoyed reading Rory’s book much because I agreed with so many of the lessons he imparts to his readers (though I should mention that our views on medicine are quite different). He teaches these life lessons by showing rather than just telling, and he does so without you even realizing he’s teaching anything at all. When he acknowledges that he’s known for wearing overalls, he explains, “I don’t want to be defined by something on the outside. I’d rather be known for what’s inside of me. The man that I am, not the man that I look like I am.” What a powerful message from such a seemingly insignificant detail. Rory impresses the importance of being humble, of giving to church, and of wrongs being made right. But Rory gives credit to Joey for having helped him grow to see the importance in these things.
Their story is so sweet, and there’s much to be learned from it. There’s definitely much to be learned from Rory’s very unordinary tale of the ordinary.