Rory Feek is asking the country music community to pray for his little girl.
Feek shared on his blog and Instagram that his 12-year-old daughter, Indiana, will undergo open heart surgery on Wednesday morning at Dell Children’s Medical Center in Austin, Texas. The surgery will repair a ventricular septal defect, a small hole in her heart that has been there since she was born.
“We’ve always known that open heart surgery was a possibility,” Feek wrote. “But this last appointment in January confirmed that it was something that needed to be done, sooner than later.”
Indiana has Down syndrome, and about half of babies born with the condition have heart issues. Rory and his late wife, Joey, had known about the hole since Indiana was an infant. Doctors hoped it would close on its own. For most babies with VSD, it does. For Indiana, it didn’t.
“Ultimately, the hole continued to be there,” Feek wrote. “It hasn’t gotten any larger, but over time, it has begun to cause a few complications.”
Indiana Told Her Papa She Didn’t Want the Surgery and Asked God for a Miracle
Getting Indiana emotionally ready for what’s coming has been the hardest part for Rory.
“I don’t want the surgery Papa,” Indiana said through tears. “I want the miracle.”
Feek wrote that he held his little girl while she cried and said, “We have been, and are continuing to pray for her miracle.”
“Preparing her for something that’s going to be very hard on her,” he reflected. “Hard on all of us, especially her Papa, to see her go through so much difficulty and pain. But I also know that when it’s done, it’s going to make her life better.”
Her cardiologist has told the family that the condition isn’t life-threatening right now, but it could eventually affect her quality and length of life if the hole is not repaired. From the outside, Feek says Indiana is “as healthy and happy as can be,” though she “often gets winded when she’s running and playing with other kids.”
The family visited two children’s hospitals before deciding on Dell Children’s in Austin. Indiana will spend approximately 10 days in the hospital and then recover at home for six to eight weeks.
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The Feek Family Has Already Been Through More Than Most
Anyone who has followed this family knows they’ve already walked through the kind of pain that breaks people.
Indiana was born on February 17, 2014, with Down syndrome. Shortly after her birth, her mother, Joey Feek, was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Joey and Rory were one of country music’s most beloved duets, a Grammy-nominated husband-and-wife duo who came up through CMT’s “Can You Duet” in 2008 and built a following on the back of honest, heartfelt country music.
Joey passed away on March 4, 2016. She was 40 years old. Indiana was two.
Rory has raised Indiana as a single father for over ten years, documenting their life together through his “This Life I Live” blog. He wrote songs for Clay Walker, Blake Shelton, and Tracy Byrd before stepping back from the industry to focus on being a dad. Videos of Indiana singing hymns alongside recordings of her mama, Joey, have gone viral multiple times, and every single one of them still hits just as hard.
Now that same little girl, the one Joey fought to bring into this world, is asking God for a miracle before she goes into surgery.
“This last couple of weeks and days has also been a time of much prayer for our family,” Feek wrote. “Indy knows well that God can do miracles and so that’s what she has been praying for.”
“On Sunday morning, in church, the whole congregation of more than a thousand prayed for her.”
Country music has always been a family. And right now, one of its own is asking that family to do the simplest, most powerful thing it can. Pray for Indiana.
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