Rory Feek Has ‘High Hopes’ for Daughter Indiana as She Begins School
Rory Feek and his 2-year-old daughter, Indiana, are settling into a new life together in the wake of Joey Feek's passing, and in a new post to his blog, Rory reveals that she has just started attending a very special school.
Indiana was born with Down syndrome, and Joey was planning to home school her when she got older.
"But life has changed that plan," Rory writes in his blog, This Life I Live.
"I have written before about our desire to live our lives with 'high hopes and low expectations' … but during the month of January, when Joey and I decided we needed to start researching what and where the next-best option for school for Indy might be … we had no idea that God would lead us to a place called, of all things … ‘High Hopes’."
High Hopes is a developmental center and pre-school, and it's less than half an hour from Rory's farm in rural Tennessee. "Half of the Center is a preschool and the other half is a state-of-the-art therapy center for children with special needs," he writes. "When I showed this video about their program to Joey, she wiped the tears from her eyes and with a beautiful smile said, 'that’s the one honey… that’s the one.'"
"Joey was so excited about Indy getting the chance to come to High Hopes and I was so thankful that she felt great about it," he adds. "Somehow she managed to transform her disappointment of not getting to raise and teach Indy into a real hope of something even better. I don’t know how, but she did. And she never cried another tear over it."
Indy is already settling into her new routine, and Rory shared several adorable photos of her playing and discovering. She's also started speech classes and physical therapy that will teach her to walk.
"I can hardly imagine how special it will be when the time finally comes that she can walk beside me and talk with me," Rory says. "I believe that God gives us just what we need, when we need it. Sometimes it’s not what we had planned or what we thought we wanted, but if we keep an open mind … it just might even be better than what we originally hoped for."
When he came to pick his daughter up from her first day, Indy's teacher shared that the youngster had found a toy figure of a man that she'd been holding up and signing "Papa." Adorably, the little figurine is a blond-haired man wearing Rory's trademark overalls.
Rory admits it's a struggle, but he and his daughter seem to be settling into life without Joey as well as could be expected.
"Indy and I are trying to adjust to our new life at home. To the empty chair at our table and pillow on the other side of my bed. Desperately missing Joey and carrying her in our hearts with us everywhere we go," he writes. "Knowing, believing … that she’s looking down each morning as I take Indy into High Hopes, still smiling saying, “that’s the one honey … that’s the one”.
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