Rory Feek of Joey + Rory has been sharing the emotional journey he and his wife have been on via his This Life I Live blog as Joey battles Stage 4 cancer. His posts often detail the couple's highs and lows, and his latest entry — which reveals Joey is close to death — also includes an uplifting letter from a fan that he says made him "hurt in a good way."

Rory writes of Joey's love of cowboys, admitting that he still doesn't understand why Joey choose him and not some "rugged horseman from Texas or Montana."

"But then again, maybe it’s not about looking like a cowboy, it’s about what’s inside," he says. "Maybe that’s what she saw in me that I didn’t. Maybe there’s more to it than the hat and horse that Joey admired about George and Gus and Woodrow… maybe it was what she believed was inside of those cowboys. What she believed was inside of me…"

Rory reveals a letter from a fan out west that hurt the singer, but helped him realize it was words he needed to hear. In the email, the fan compares Rory to a cowboy, writing:

Cowboy, you get to stand on the same stage as her.

She looks at you, into your eyes. She’s not looking at the crowd for attention. She’s looking at you, because she’s amazed by you. Cowboy, that’s an old fashioned love, that you get to experience. She can’t fake that, and she can’t help that. She can’t hide that. We can all see that. Well done.

Partner, there’s a beautiful little girl who is learning how to look at her dad, because she see’s how her mommy looks at you. Ms. Joey’s done her job – and done it well. Now she can just be a mommy. Little girls like yours may learn different than other children, but they learn. They learn and know love better than most of us. I grew up with a mom who worked with special needs children. Few things can love, like a child with special needs. Truly a blessing of life long love.

The fan, Jim Brennan, explains that he sat at the same restaurant with Joey + Rory years ago and observed that they were "just two normal people at a small booth."

"It was so obvious. It was American love ... and it did not need to be interrupted," he recalls. "I smiled as I left, thinking, 'That’s what it’s all about.' A couple famous folks, who probably don’t care about the fame. It reminded me of what George Strait must look like. Just a real person, enjoying taking his beautiful wife out for breakfast, and damn the attention. Like a real cowboy, it’s a way of life. Everything is in the moment, and beauty rises to the surface."

Brennan compares Rory sharing Joey's story with the word as being a burden only a real cowboy can shoulder:

You’re a cowboy, Rory. The kind who’s rough calluses on his hands, feel soft to the women he loves.

What you’re going through, I can’t imagine. You’ve got those big square shoulders, and she’s got those big pretty eyes. It’s the perfect puzzle. The perfect match.

Rory, I pray for peace for Joey. Whatever happens, you need prayer too. Partner, Cowboy, square your shoulders, because your beautiful wife and daughter, they need a cowboy right now, and you’re the one that God knows has the biggest, strongest shoulders.

Words that Rory couldn't quite understand at the time of reading, he says were something he came to grasp after he showed the letter to Joey, who "gave me a little wink that seemed to say, 'you may not understand … but I do.'"

A few days after daughter Indiana’s second birthday on Feb. 17, Joey gathered her family together to say her goodbyes.

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