In early November, Rory Feek told the world that his wife Joey Feek would lose her battle with colorectal cancer. Having undergone chemotherapy, surgery and radiation after the cancer struck her for the second time in June, Joey Feek was going to stop all treatment and enter the hospice phase, according to her husband. She planned to spend her remaining days bonding with her daughter, one-year-old Indiana. Hauntingly, Joey was recording stories for Indiana so that she would always be able to hear her mother’s voice.
Since that move to hospice, Joey has taken “upturns” and “downturns” according to Rory’s reports, which appear in all their heartbreaking sorrow and beauty at his blog, This Life I Live. Rory wrote on November 29: There isn’t a day that goes by that she doesn’t look me and her family in the eye and say “I’m gonna beat this”, or “I’m getting better, I believe that”. And she asks me if I believe it, and I do. I choose to. Rory Feeks writes with the self-knowledge of what’s to come, but also with the courageous hopefulness he shares with his wife. In order to persevere, they must believe. He writes: Part of us once again believes that God is answering Joey’s prayer by healing her body and taking the cancer away, despite all the odds.