With me on the phone. Is Rory Fike. You probably remember he and his late wife, Joey, had a television show. He's a songwriter. She was a singer. Uh. Just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. A daddy. He's got two grown daughters and now little Indie Indiana. He's also an author. He's written a couple of books. We're gonna be talking about that. He's got a children's book out to the cow said nay, but we're gonna be talking about the book that I just finished, called now Once upon a Farm. Rory Fike, thank you so much for coming back and talking to us tonight. Are you at home? Are you calling me from your farm? I'm calling you from my farm where I'm folding laundry as we speak. Lots of little girl clothes. Yeah, I have quite a few little girl clothes and some some big boy overalls. Yeah. Your laundry has got to be pretty simple. You put the shirts in one load and then you're overalls. How many pairs do you own? I have a bunch. I'm kind of embarrassed to say, give me a ballpark, just a gas because and then I'm going to confess about my boots. Well, I mean I probably have. I mean I probably have tin pairs. So that's not that's not a lot I've had. That's not a bunch. Well, it's a bunch when you know, you really don't need that many, but it's a bunch for a man with overalls. You do need that many because you need the darker blue ones for like church service. Yeah, you need the ones with the holes and the knees for tinkering unto the car. I mean, come on, yeah, I do. I've got the I've got some black um shovrals for formal occasions, shov als for farmal occasions, for farmal occasions exactly. Now do you wear boots for the farmal occasions? Do you have like black boots to go with the blacks? Yeah? Uh, I mean I might, I might look ridiculous, but I do it well. But you're comfortable for me. It was a number of years ago. It just became one less thing. You know, you just what should I wear overalls? Okay, I don't think about that anymore. How are you doing? I'm hanging in you know. Yeah. Have you heard the I'm sure you have um Willie Nelson song. It's not something you get over. No, I haven't heard it, oh Rory, I must have listened to this song a thousand times after Zach left. It says, it's not something you get over, it's just something you get through. Wow, that's a pretty powerful statement. It's kind of become my mantra. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's uh. I don't ever say because nobody ever knows what to say, Like they don't never know what to say. So you know when they say when they do talk about, you know, moving on, like I just that doesn't feel like a real thing to me. I mean, you just keep moving forward. But I don't think you move on. That's why that song just Who was such a gift, because you don't move on, You just you just get through it. Hopefully you're like me, where in spite of it, you'd still look around and see all the blessings, and that makes a big difference. I just feel blessed all the time. I would just now came over here because I was five minutes ago. I was at the schoolhouse that opened yesterday in Indiana, and a dozen other kids are all having lunch around a big farm table and having the greatest time in the world and all these little kids I'm just now getting to know, and that's just happened at our farm just now. And I don't know what the future is, but it's amazing. So the blessings continue in spite of, you know, the the hurts, and what a blessed, blessed, blessed life you have. I know, I know the pain is excruciating, but um, I just finished Once upon a Farm I've been since back left. I can't concentrate, so I read like two pages at a time. But there there are so many beautiful little stories that you've shared in here, and so many miracles and blessings that have happened. And one of my favorite chapters is when you talk about your worst nightmare, how you were afraid that your actions, that you have this recurring nightmare, that your foolishness would cause you to lose your wife. You know, though God called her home, it wasn't because you reverted to your old ways or foolishness. And I don't know why that touched me so deeply, but I think that's one of my favorite stories you shared. Well, it happened because I was in the airport, Zach Joey was here you know, we it was during times when she was going through surgery and recovering through your chemo and radiation, or at least we we hoped she was recovering, and UM and I had to travel somewhere without her, and we never went anywhere without each other. We just didn't. We didn't. Every single time at the park and fly place, they knew who we were, and they knew we were always together. And if we walked up to the counter at Southwest or Delta, they knew we were. So it uh, it felt weird for me to walk through there, and it hurt me because people were asking me where Joey was. But what happened was I realized that that could happen, that could have happened to where people are doing the same thing. And this is even before Joey passed away. But I found some sort of peace and the fact that UM, a lot of times we as men or just we in our lives, we will mess up the greatest thing that we've ever had, whatever that happens to be, and we'll mess it up just by doing something stupid or neglecting it. And I could have been walking through their under that that airport under completely different circumstances to where everyone asking me it would have been could have been something that I did or I didn't do, And for some reason, I felt blessed to be able to just know that I'm still in the beautiful love story, even though it's hard, and even though I'm walking through by myself at this moment. It just changed things for me. I think in that chapter I said I had this. I've always had this recurring nightmare that something would happen and I would lose my wife Joey. Even though it happened, it just didn't happen the way that I was afraid of it. And the thing is, I'm just blessed even to be here today and feel like I'm still just as in love and just as committed as I was before. Amen. Amen and your Cowboy Church. How's that going? I want to come some day. It's going great. Last hen was the first, so they've been here in our barn for a year and a half. They started, I think in February of two thousand and seventeen, and so last weekend they moved from our barn to a new um, a new place. They moved to an elementary school and they're trying to build their own barn. So that had to happen because our our one room schoolhouse just opened and they need a place for their kids to be and they've kind of outgrown our barn. So I think this is going to probably lead them to bigger and better things. I have to believe in reading that your chapters in your book Once upon a Farm, that that was such a gift from God to put that worship service there, those people there at such a time, so that you didn't have to put any effort. You just walk across the field, across the driveway and your minister too. What a gift. Yeah, it really has been, and I it actually brought even you know, brought community here. We were part of a wonderful community, but that's a different community and lots of folks coming in from other places that I I would not have met if they didn't come in there. So yeah, it has been really wonderful. It's kind of been hard to say goodbye to it being here in the barn, but at the same time, it's only, you know, six miles down the road, so we'll still be there on Sundays. I thought about that, and I thought, how good is God to say, I see what you need. You need people, You need community, and he needs to have multitudes of people to love on because she's so social. And I know you don't have it in you to go find this community. So how about I just bring it to your front yard, so there's no you don't have to you don't have to think about it, you don't have to put yourself out there. Just walk across the driveway and be blessed. Yeah, it's been amazing. And one of the things that happened right away was since our concert hall had been empty for a year and a half almost years, we um we just thought we would be wonderful to have some life in there and some some music and some some preaching and all of it some people in love and laughter. So we opened it up and they started having Cowboy Church there, and I bet it was about the second or third weekend there was a girl on stage singing one of our songs that my wife used to sing, called Heart of the Woods. And at first I kind of wasn't sure what I thought. I was setting in the audience, and all of a sudden she starts to sing my wife's song, and then I just kept listening, and of course it really I got really emotional listening to it, but it also reminded me what an amazing song it was and how the song needs to continue to be heard. And I realized as I heard her sing it, it made me realize that, hey, I could sing some of these songs, even even if I just changed them from Joey's respective to mine, maybe that would be okay. That was the first thing that sort of planted a seed that maybe I should get back on stage at some point, and so it took a little time from there, but that was another gift from Cowboy Church, was just hearing people sing our songs and reminding me how special they were and that they were still here if I wanted to sing them. Wow, you have faced so much and you do it with a whole lot of class. There's a lot of power and being honest. And when I read Once upon a Farm and you were really honest, you put it out there, Rory, you just you just I was like, WHOA. But now you're just like really honest about what your family is going through and who they are, And I'm like, Wow, You're my hero for being able to be that transparent and that loving and that um classy. Well it's already happening anyway. You know, I could try and not share it. But all of these are real life things, you know, that are things in the past, are are things that have gotten me to where I am, even even the terrible mistakes that I've made there, they're a very big important part of the story. And also, like those scary things, you know, at the time when I was going through them or when I was making those decisions, you know, I never had anyone to even talk to or read something that I could relate to. And for some reason, it feels like all the power is really in being honest, and that's the real power to be able to be encouraging to other folks, because you know they they're maybe making some struggle or having some struggles, and maybe you make them feel like, well, there's isn't so bad after all, or um or maybe whatever I am I'm involved in right now, it doesn't mean that this is the person I'm going to be down the road. Maybe I can be a better person, maybe I could live a better life. Maybe just because I'm I'm empty inside and I feel corrupt or um, I have no self esteem. Maybe just maybe I could have joy in my life and peace in my life. So but it feels like the only way to be of any service is to be able to be honest and and share. And then that's also not only for the past, but also in the present. Is we're living this life, why not continue to share it? Honestly, I'm not a great rememberer. And so if I have to um coal and try and figure out which parts of my life I've shared or I haven't shared, or I feel like I could tell someone or I shouldn't tell people, I would I think it would cause me some anxiety or something. But instead I kind of feel it doesn't really matter who it is. I would tell them anything anything about myself, you know, about what I've gone through or what we're going through, because I feel like it I don't have to remember anything. I just can be honest all the time. So, and the other thing is is for some reason, um it actually helps for the most part, it helps everyone around me, even my children. Um In some of the struggles you know that we have are with my older girls and the differences of life styles and opinions and faith. But you know the truth is. I may not always agree with them, but I can still respect them and honor them, and that's all they really ask for. My grandma used to always say, tell the truth, and you don't have to try to remember your life. You're being that transparent has permissioned me to be a lot more authentic. And I think Marie, your voice today is doing the same thing, encouraging all of us to be more authentic, more transparent, more vulnerable. Um, you know, you're very real about the fact that you're learning to be a parent, a better parent, a good parent, and the mistakes that you might have made, and you know all of us. I think all of us who are parents feel the same way. I've been parenting for a long, long, long time. My oldest biological child has five children of his own now. But I look at baby Paul and I think, did I do this right? The other fourteen times? Thirteen times? I don't know? And I think your book permissions all of us to just be more real. So thank you, well, thank you. I appreciate that. Have you reatten the book yet? Do I need to get your book? It's called One Heart at a Time, and uh, it's about how I believe that we're not going to change the world through politicians, through laws, through rants on Facebook, or a religious overtones. I believe that we will change the world one heart at a time by entering into real relationships with the people that God places in our life, and that if we will invest our time and energy into real relationships, we can solve the homeless problem. We can solve the drug epidemic. We can we can change the world for good. But we're not going to do it through policies or politics, or waiting for somebody else to fix the foster care system, or waiting for somebody else to ah, you know, reach out to somebody who's disabled. We have to do it ourselves, one heart at a time. That's wonderful. I love the time too. You'll have to send the make copy. I will send you a copy that the book was finished right before Zack decided to leave, so I had to, you know, rewriting some of it. It was really hard. Mm hmm. I can't even imagine. I hope you never ever have to. Yeah, I can't. I talk about this sometimes. Um, there are people who, you know, there's no way to gauge one person's hurt you above greater or smaller. But I just know that the so a child just feels like it would be a whole different thing. Joey's father was here actually this weekend. He came in because we had we had a harvest dinner at our farm with a bunch of people on Joey's birthday, so the day before yesterday, and he came in this weekend and spent time with us. And you know, she would have been forty three, and yeah, you just sort of walked around. He's always a sweet, sweet man, but it was there's a lot of weight there because even though she would have been forty three, that's his little girl. I I don't even hardly know how to process his pain and what he feels. No, I just think it's it's got to be greater than mine. I don't know if, like you said, you can measure, there's no greater than less than But you certainly never envisioned that you'll outlive your kids. How do you see God in that equation at all? Well, if it weren't for the fact that the word says that all of his days were numbered before a single one came to pass, I would go crazy. I would go crazy but I cling to that. I go, Okay, God, you knew when you were going to call him home before you gave him to me, and he was only on loan and I'll see him again. And the other thing is he was, you know, like your wife. He had such a big personality that he took up so much room in our family. You know. I just he loved life for you? Is it? Is it just I feel like this is this is an everyday ache that's too too great like your yours. You just feel like it's still just as fresh as it was. Oh yeah, I'm ways for you. Yeah. But like I said, God brought maybe Paul to us two months before Zach left. And I don't have the luxury of having a mental breakdown like I would like to. I really would like to just stay in bed and pull the covers up over my head and and stay there. But I got a baby, I got a nine year old, I got a fourteen year old. I've got rally practice to get him to and dental appointments. And my fourteen year old is the vice president of her class this year, so she's got all these activities and things she has to organize and events, and you know, God's like, Nope, you don't get to you don't get to do sheet therapy. Delighted. You gotta you gotta keep moving, You gotta keep going. And you know, like like your baby was for you, you you can't stay in bed when there's a baby that needs a dip or changed. My feeling of gratitude is so big. I know you can read it in the book and stuff, But the truth is I have some sort of thing inside of me, like a rewiring that doesn't let me feel. I can only see the good and um, and so I find myself just just remembering and thinking of the good and asking no questions. I just want to be an encouragement to you, because you have a lot on your plate. For me, there's just gotta be some way that in some bigger picture scheme, this is, This is the story it's supposed to be, And who knows how or why. I can't help but believe that that there has to be good, even though there is it's hard to see. You said something uh in your book, and you said it in this conversation about how blessed you were to have shared a love like you shared with your wife, and as hard as it is. I love to be a news book like your music. You know, when music is playing and it's throbbing, and and then it's silent. When music fills up a room or fills up a stadium, or fills up your headphones, and then it's silent, it's such a huge void. And he was, he was a big song. Mm hmm. I think that's the that's where the power is is if you could really, you could really really really hang on to that. And I think that's what maybe, well, that's really probably why in my first book, I had to be able to tell and share what a mess of my life that I had made for so many years. Did a really good job of it, of telling the story and of making a mess, Yeah, for sure. But the thing is is that if I don't tell that, if I don't remind myself even of that, I could feel like I'm robbed. You know, other people could they get to be married thirty years or whatever it happens to me, they get they get a lifetime of love together. But if I'm true, if I tell the truth, I I don't think I deserved what I got. So it really isn't fair for me to say even though I got fourteen years with Joey, with someone who so special and a light like I've never seen before and I've probably never seen again, it doesn't seem right for me to be upset that I didn't get more. So I only bask in the in the amount I got, and I carry it with me. Even though a big voice has been silenced, I don't really see it that way. You know, her My voice is her voice. She's inside of me. She's helping me make choices, she's helping me when I'm seeing on stage. It's because of her that I get to be here or that where you and I are even talking because of her. It really is because of her. And so she still lives, you know, in a million gazillion ways, and there's there's something about that that makes a big difference to me. And just just being able to concentrate on the fact that I am so fortunate to have had any of it. So I just want to bask in that and tell everybody it's possible to have it, even if it's for a short time. I just feel so grateful. And then even with a little one, it isn't that, it isn't that I don't have time to have a mental breakdown. I don't have a reason to have a mental breakdown. I have. I have the most amazing gift in front of me, all of it. It's so amazing, like I get to have purpose, even if it's just that one, and I got lots of them, as you do. I don't know how to look at it. It's just like it's all the good just stares me in the face all the time, and I can't see anything else. Doesn't mean that, especially with songs and scenes from a movie, or something will happen, or I'll read something and it'll just I'll just take my breath away and it'll just come right back up again. I'll think about Joey, and I'll think about how I wish that she were here with me, or how I wish she were here and I wasn't if someone had to go, or I wish she could be here with me at these beautiful moments with Indiana or these challenging moments. But that doesn't that doesn't last long. That just reminds me that I loved her deeply and that she's still here and I still feel it. But it doesn't have to take my day and you know, make me just live in the past or anything else. It helps me to move forward for some reason. So, like I said, everybody is a little different. I just want to encourage you in any way that I could. Thank you. So your book Once Upon a Farm, Rory Feek. Where can people find it? Well, they can't find it in Christian bookstores, mostly because they didn't put it in there because it has a chapter that they don't like. And I understand that. Um, but you divided in Walmart and UM and lots of other places Target, I think, and Costco and Sam's Club and online. So yeah, I think it's kind of all around. Why do you get it at Cracker Barrel my favorite place to eat? Oh my gosh, do I love their biscuits and gravy. Yeah, they're wonderful. Rory, thank you so much for sharing your heart, for being so vulnerable, for living your faith, for understanding that you don't get past some things, but you still have to go forward. The children's book The Cow Said Nay, and the book for grown ups Once Upon this Farm really bless my heart. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you for being a part of conversations with Delilah thank you for your time today always wonderful to talk to you, Delila.

With me on the phone. Is Rory Fike. You probably remember he and his late wife, Joey, had a television show. He's a songwriter. She was a singer. Uh. Just a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful human being. A daddy. He's got two grown daughters and now little Indie Indiana. He's also an author. He's written a couple of books. We're gonna be talking about that. He's got a children's book out to the cow said nay, but we're gonna be talking about the book that I just finished, called now Once upon a Farm. Rory Fike, thank you so much for coming back and talking to us tonight. Are you at home? Are you calling me from your farm? I'm calling you from my farm where I'm folding laundry as we speak. Lots of little girl clothes. Yeah, I have quite a few little girl clothes and some some big boy overalls. Yeah. Your laundry has got to be pretty simple. You put the shirts in one load and then you're overalls. How many pairs do you own? I have a bunch. I'm kind of embarrassed to say, give me a ballpark, just a gas because and then I'm going to confess about my boots. Well, I mean I probably have. I mean I probably have tin pairs. So that's not that's not a lot I've had. That's not a bunch. Well, it's a bunch when you know, you really don't need that many, but it's a bunch for a man with overalls. You do need that many because you need the darker blue ones for like church service. Yeah, you need the ones with the holes and the knees for tinkering unto the car. I mean, come on, yeah, I do. I've got the I've got some black um shovrals for formal occasions, shov als for farmal occasions, for farmal occasions exactly. Now do you wear boots for the farmal occasions? Do you have like black boots to go with the blacks? Yeah? Uh, I mean I might, I might look ridiculous, but I do it well. But you're comfortable for me. It was a number of years ago. It just became one less thing. You know, you just what should I wear overalls? Okay, I don't think about that anymore. How are you doing? I'm hanging in you know. Yeah. Have you heard the I'm sure you have um Willie Nelson song. It's not something you get over. No, I haven't heard it, oh Rory, I must have listened to this song a thousand times after Zach left. It says, it's not something you get over, it's just something you get through. Wow, that's a pretty powerful statement. It's kind of become my mantra. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's uh. I don't ever say because nobody ever knows what to say, Like they don't never know what to say. So you know when they say when they do talk about, you know, moving on, like I just that doesn't feel like a real thing to me. I mean, you just keep moving forward. But I don't think you move on. That's why that song just Who was such a gift, because you don't move on, You just you just get through it. Hopefully you're like me, where in spite of it, you'd still look around and see all the blessings, and that makes a big difference. I just feel blessed all the time. I would just now came over here because I was five minutes ago. I was at the schoolhouse that opened yesterday in Indiana, and a dozen other kids are all having lunch around a big farm table and having the greatest time in the world and all these little kids I'm just now getting to know, and that's just happened at our farm just now. And I don't know what the future is, but it's amazing. So the blessings continue in spite of, you know, the the hurts, and what a blessed, blessed, blessed life you have. I know, I know the pain is excruciating, but um, I just finished Once upon a Farm I've been since back left. I can't concentrate, so I read like two pages at a time. But there there are so many beautiful little stories that you've shared in here, and so many miracles and blessings that have happened. And one of my favorite chapters is when you talk about your worst nightmare, how you were afraid that your actions, that you have this recurring nightmare, that your foolishness would cause you to lose your wife. You know, though God called her home, it wasn't because you reverted to your old ways or foolishness. And I don't know why that touched me so deeply, but I think that's one of my favorite stories you shared. Well, it happened because I was in the airport, Zach Joey was here you know, we it was during times when she was going through surgery and recovering through your chemo and radiation, or at least we we hoped she was recovering, and UM and I had to travel somewhere without her, and we never went anywhere without each other. We just didn't. We didn't. Every single time at the park and fly place, they knew who we were, and they knew we were always together. And if we walked up to the counter at Southwest or Delta, they knew we were. So it uh, it felt weird for me to walk through there, and it hurt me because people were asking me where Joey was. But what happened was I realized that that could happen, that could have happened to where people are doing the same thing. And this is even before Joey passed away. But I found some sort of peace and the fact that UM, a lot of times we as men or just we in our lives, we will mess up the greatest thing that we've ever had, whatever that happens to be, and we'll mess it up just by doing something stupid or neglecting it. And I could have been walking through their under that that airport under completely different circumstances to where everyone asking me it would have been could have been something that I did or I didn't do, And for some reason, I felt blessed to be able to just know that I'm still in the beautiful love story, even though it's hard, and even though I'm walking through by myself at this moment. It just changed things for me. I think in that chapter I said I had this. I've always had this recurring nightmare that something would happen and I would lose my wife Joey. Even though it happened, it just didn't happen the way that I was afraid of it. And the thing is, I'm just blessed even to be here today and feel like I'm still just as in love and just as committed as I was before. Amen. Amen and your Cowboy Church. How's that going? I want to come some day. It's going great. Last hen was the first, so they've been here in our barn for a year and a half. They started, I think in February of two thousand and seventeen, and so last weekend they moved from our barn to a new um, a new place. They moved to an elementary school and they're trying to build their own barn. So that had to happen because our our one room schoolhouse just opened and they need a place for their kids to be and they've kind of outgrown our barn. So I think this is going to probably lead them to bigger and better things. I have to believe in reading that your chapters in your book Once upon a Farm, that that was such a gift from God to put that worship service there, those people there at such a time, so that you didn't have to put any effort. You just walk across the field, across the driveway and your minister too. What a gift. Yeah, it really has been, and I it actually brought even you know, brought community here. We were part of a wonderful community, but that's a different community and lots of folks coming in from other places that I I would not have met if they didn't come in there. So yeah, it has been really wonderful. It's kind of been hard to say goodbye to it being here in the barn, but at the same time, it's only, you know, six miles down the road, so we'll still be there on Sundays. I thought about that, and I thought, how good is God to say, I see what you need. You need people, You need community, and he needs to have multitudes of people to love on because she's so social. And I know you don't have it in you to go find this community. So how about I just bring it to your front yard, so there's no you don't have to you don't have to think about it, you don't have to put yourself out there. Just walk across the driveway and be blessed. Yeah, it's been amazing. And one of the things that happened right away was since our concert hall had been empty for a year and a half almost years, we um we just thought we would be wonderful to have some life in there and some some music and some some preaching and all of it some people in love and laughter. So we opened it up and they started having Cowboy Church there, and I bet it was about the second or third weekend there was a girl on stage singing one of our songs that my wife used to sing, called Heart of the Woods. And at first I kind of wasn't sure what I thought. I was setting in the audience, and all of a sudden she starts to sing my wife's song, and then I just kept listening, and of course it really I got really emotional listening to it, but it also reminded me what an amazing song it was and how the song needs to continue to be heard. And I realized as I heard her sing it, it made me realize that, hey, I could sing some of these songs, even even if I just changed them from Joey's respective to mine, maybe that would be okay. That was the first thing that sort of planted a seed that maybe I should get back on stage at some point, and so it took a little time from there, but that was another gift from Cowboy Church, was just hearing people sing our songs and reminding me how special they were and that they were still here if I wanted to sing them. Wow, you have faced so much and you do it with a whole lot of class. There's a lot of power and being honest. And when I read Once upon a Farm and you were really honest, you put it out there, Rory, you just you just I was like, WHOA. But now you're just like really honest about what your family is going through and who they are, And I'm like, Wow, You're my hero for being able to be that transparent and that loving and that um classy. Well it's already happening anyway. You know, I could try and not share it. But all of these are real life things, you know, that are things in the past, are are things that have gotten me to where I am, even even the terrible mistakes that I've made there, they're a very big important part of the story. And also, like those scary things, you know, at the time when I was going through them or when I was making those decisions, you know, I never had anyone to even talk to or read something that I could relate to. And for some reason, it feels like all the power is really in being honest, and that's the real power to be able to be encouraging to other folks, because you know they they're maybe making some struggle or having some struggles, and maybe you make them feel like, well, there's isn't so bad after all, or um or maybe whatever I am I'm involved in right now, it doesn't mean that this is the person I'm going to be down the road. Maybe I can be a better person, maybe I could live a better life. Maybe just because I'm I'm empty inside and I feel corrupt or um, I have no self esteem. Maybe just maybe I could have joy in my life and peace in my life. So but it feels like the only way to be of any service is to be able to be honest and and share. And then that's also not only for the past, but also in the present. Is we're living this life, why not continue to share it? Honestly, I'm not a great rememberer. And so if I have to um coal and try and figure out which parts of my life I've shared or I haven't shared, or I feel like I could tell someone or I shouldn't tell people, I would I think it would cause me some anxiety or something. But instead I kind of feel it doesn't really matter who it is. I would tell them anything anything about myself, you know, about what I've gone through or what we're going through, because I feel like it I don't have to remember anything. I just can be honest all the time. So, and the other thing is is for some reason, um it actually helps for the most part, it helps everyone around me, even my children. Um In some of the struggles you know that we have are with my older girls and the differences of life styles and opinions and faith. But you know the truth is. I may not always agree with them, but I can still respect them and honor them, and that's all they really ask for. My grandma used to always say, tell the truth, and you don't have to try to remember your life. You're being that transparent has permissioned me to be a lot more authentic. And I think Marie, your voice today is doing the same thing, encouraging all of us to be more authentic, more transparent, more vulnerable. Um, you know, you're very real about the fact that you're learning to be a parent, a better parent, a good parent, and the mistakes that you might have made, and you know all of us. I think all of us who are parents feel the same way. I've been parenting for a long, long, long time. My oldest biological child has five children of his own now. But I look at baby Paul and I think, did I do this right? The other fourteen times? Thirteen times? I don't know? And I think your book permissions all of us to just be more real. So thank you, well, thank you. I appreciate that. Have you reatten the book yet? Do I need to get your book? It's called One Heart at a Time, and uh, it's about how I believe that we're not going to change the world through politicians, through laws, through rants on Facebook, or a religious overtones. I believe that we will change the world one heart at a time by entering into real relationships with the people that God places in our life, and that if we will invest our time and energy into real relationships, we can solve the homeless problem. We can solve the drug epidemic. We can we can change the world for good. But we're not going to do it through policies or politics, or waiting for somebody else to fix the foster care system, or waiting for somebody else to ah, you know, reach out to somebody who's disabled. We have to do it ourselves, one heart at a time. That's wonderful. I love the time too. You'll have to send the make copy. I will send you a copy that the book was finished right before Zack decided to leave, so I had to, you know, rewriting some of it. It was really hard. Mm hmm. I can't even imagine. I hope you never ever have to. Yeah, I can't. I talk about this sometimes. Um, there are people who, you know, there's no way to gauge one person's hurt you above greater or smaller. But I just know that the so a child just feels like it would be a whole different thing. Joey's father was here actually this weekend. He came in because we had we had a harvest dinner at our farm with a bunch of people on Joey's birthday, so the day before yesterday, and he came in this weekend and spent time with us. And you know, she would have been forty three, and yeah, you just sort of walked around. He's always a sweet, sweet man, but it was there's a lot of weight there because even though she would have been forty three, that's his little girl. I I don't even hardly know how to process his pain and what he feels. No, I just think it's it's got to be greater than mine. I don't know if, like you said, you can measure, there's no greater than less than But you certainly never envisioned that you'll outlive your kids. How do you see God in that equation at all? Well, if it weren't for the fact that the word says that all of his days were numbered before a single one came to pass, I would go crazy. I would go crazy but I cling to that. I go, Okay, God, you knew when you were going to call him home before you gave him to me, and he was only on loan and I'll see him again. And the other thing is he was, you know, like your wife. He had such a big personality that he took up so much room in our family. You know. I just he loved life for you? Is it? Is it just I feel like this is this is an everyday ache that's too too great like your yours. You just feel like it's still just as fresh as it was. Oh yeah, I'm ways for you. Yeah. But like I said, God brought maybe Paul to us two months before Zach left. And I don't have the luxury of having a mental breakdown like I would like to. I really would like to just stay in bed and pull the covers up over my head and and stay there. But I got a baby, I got a nine year old, I got a fourteen year old. I've got rally practice to get him to and dental appointments. And my fourteen year old is the vice president of her class this year, so she's got all these activities and things she has to organize and events, and you know, God's like, Nope, you don't get to you don't get to do sheet therapy. Delighted. You gotta you gotta keep moving, You gotta keep going. And you know, like like your baby was for you, you you can't stay in bed when there's a baby that needs a dip or changed. My feeling of gratitude is so big. I know you can read it in the book and stuff, But the truth is I have some sort of thing inside of me, like a rewiring that doesn't let me feel. I can only see the good and um, and so I find myself just just remembering and thinking of the good and asking no questions. I just want to be an encouragement to you, because you have a lot on your plate. For me, there's just gotta be some way that in some bigger picture scheme, this is, This is the story it's supposed to be, And who knows how or why. I can't help but believe that that there has to be good, even though there is it's hard to see. You said something uh in your book, and you said it in this conversation about how blessed you were to have shared a love like you shared with your wife, and as hard as it is. I love to be a news book like your music. You know, when music is playing and it's throbbing, and and then it's silent. When music fills up a room or fills up a stadium, or fills up your headphones, and then it's silent, it's such a huge void. And he was, he was a big song. Mm hmm. I think that's the that's where the power is is if you could really, you could really really really hang on to that. And I think that's what maybe, well, that's really probably why in my first book, I had to be able to tell and share what a mess of my life that I had made for so many years. Did a really good job of it, of telling the story and of making a mess, Yeah, for sure. But the thing is is that if I don't tell that, if I don't remind myself even of that, I could feel like I'm robbed. You know, other people could they get to be married thirty years or whatever it happens to me, they get they get a lifetime of love together. But if I'm true, if I tell the truth, I I don't think I deserved what I got. So it really isn't fair for me to say even though I got fourteen years with Joey, with someone who so special and a light like I've never seen before and I've probably never seen again, it doesn't seem right for me to be upset that I didn't get more. So I only bask in the in the amount I got, and I carry it with me. Even though a big voice has been silenced, I don't really see it that way. You know, her My voice is her voice. She's inside of me. She's helping me make choices, she's helping me when I'm seeing on stage. It's because of her that I get to be here or that where you and I are even talking because of her. It really is because of her. And so she still lives, you know, in a million gazillion ways, and there's there's something about that that makes a big difference to me. And just just being able to concentrate on the fact that I am so fortunate to have had any of it. So I just want to bask in that and tell everybody it's possible to have it, even if it's for a short time. I just feel so grateful. And then even with a little one, it isn't that, it isn't that I don't have time to have a mental breakdown. I don't have a reason to have a mental breakdown. I have. I have the most amazing gift in front of me, all of it. It's so amazing, like I get to have purpose, even if it's just that one, and I got lots of them, as you do. I don't know how to look at it. It's just like it's all the good just stares me in the face all the time, and I can't see anything else. Doesn't mean that, especially with songs and scenes from a movie, or something will happen, or I'll read something and it'll just I'll just take my breath away and it'll just come right back up again. I'll think about Joey, and I'll think about how I wish that she were here with me, or how I wish she were here and I wasn't if someone had to go, or I wish she could be here with me at these beautiful moments with Indiana or these challenging moments. But that doesn't that doesn't last long. That just reminds me that I loved her deeply and that she's still here and I still feel it. But it doesn't have to take my day and you know, make me just live in the past or anything else. It helps me to move forward for some reason. So, like I said, everybody is a little different. I just want to encourage you in any way that I could. Thank you. So your book Once Upon a Farm, Rory Feek. Where can people find it? Well, they can't find it in Christian bookstores, mostly because they didn't put it in there because it has a chapter that they don't like. And I understand that. Um, but you divided in Walmart and UM and lots of other places Target, I think, and Costco and Sam's Club and online. So yeah, I think it's kind of all around. Why do you get it at Cracker Barrel my favorite place to eat? Oh my gosh, do I love their biscuits and gravy. Yeah, they're wonderful. Rory, thank you so much for sharing your heart, for being so vulnerable, for living your faith, for understanding that you don't get past some things, but you still have to go forward. The children's book The Cow Said Nay, and the book for grown ups Once Upon this Farm really bless my heart. Just thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you for being a part of conversations with Delilah thank you for your time today always wonderful to talk to you, Delila.