AFTER BEING ON TOUR SINCE JUNE, I FINALLY GOT BACK TO Nashville the first week in December 2009. I was so glad to be home. Sleeping in my own bed in my own comfortable Nashville townhome felt fantastic. Although I had traveled the country in a first-class, million-dollar tour bus, stayed in some fabulous hotels, eaten at fine restaurants, and enjoyed plenty of backstage food, there was no better feeling than to snuggle with my pillow and sleep in my own home.
Despite my road fatigue, I awakened early, as I usually do, the morning of December 3. Wearing only flannel pj’s and a T-shirt, I rolled out of my toasty warm bed and instantly felt a chill in the air. It was unusually cold in Tennessee that year, so I reached for my Ugg slippers and threw on a heavy robe before ambling to the kitchen.
I yawned, stretched, and reached for the coffeepot. While on the road, traveling musicians learn to graciously accept almost anything that resembles coffee, but now that I was home, I brewed some of my favorite blend of GoodBean coffee that I had special-ordered from Jacksonville, Oregon. As the delicious brew slowly dripped into my coffeepot and the tantalizing aroma wafted through my townhome, I reached for one of the many specialty mugs I had collected. Today’s choice was a large yellow cup with the words Rise Up imprinted on the side.
I’m trying; I’m trying to rise up, I thought, alternately gazing at the cup and the coffeepot, wishing I could hurry the brewing process. But good things take time.
When the coffee was finally ready, I filled my cup, careful to allow room for Coffee-Mate hazelnut-flavored gourmet creamer—another personal favorite. Man, I have a great life! I thought as I stirred the rich creamer into my GoodBean. It doesn’t get much better than this. I took a sip of coffee and savored the taste while I reminisced about the sensational tour I had just completed, everything I had accomplished, and the many dreams that had come true for me in 2009, the memories of performing at Madison Square Garden still fresh in my mind. I moved about the kitchen then eased into the foyer to look out the front window, warming my hands with the coffee.
Brr, it looks cold outside, I thought. Despite the arctic blast that had gripped the southern part of the country, I saw people happily moving about the neighborhood. It was still relatively early in the Christmas season, but many Nashvillians had already decorated their homes; some had started holiday preparations more than a month ago. Others were out stringing Christmas lights in the frigid air. They appeared to be enjoying the cold weather. Brr, not me. A shiver shook through me as I looked at the frost-covered grass. Without even thinking about it, I reached over and pressed the button on the thermostat, nudging the temperature control higher by a few degrees. I raised the cup of hot coffee to my lips and allowed a sip of GoodBean to slip down my throat, warming me as it went, it seemed, all the way to my toes.
As I heard the furnace kick on, a sense of guilt suddenly overwhelmed me. I felt convicted by my oh-so-comfortable lifestyle. I wasn’t rich, but I had some money in my bank account. I wasn’t blowing money like a rock star, but I certainly wasn’t hurting either. The amount mattered little. It wasn’t that I had so much, but so many kids I had personally encountered had so little.
I recalled the faces of some foster kids I had met recently. Many of them were nearing eighteen years of age, the pivotal point when the system mandated that they would “age out”—in other words, the foster home system would turn them out of their care and back on the streets. Many of these kids had nowhere to go, no family members with whom they could live; some had few, if any, marketable skills with which they could find work; a large number of them were emotionally stunted and not yet mature enough to make it on their own in the world. They were the vulnerable ones, the ones predators lurking in the shadows salivated to see. For other, more street-smart foster kids aging out of the system, their past experiences nearly predetermined that, without help, they would return to lives of crime, drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and, inevitably, multiple prison sentences or an early death.
I knew that many foster kids aging out of the system would soon be homeless as I once had been; many of them would be condemned to sleeping on the ice-cold ground as I had done. Yet here I was, in my toasty slippers and robe in my comfortable home.
Another shiver rattled through me. I could feel the goose bumps popping up all over my skin, but this time it wasn’t because I was cold. I had made some promises to those kids and to myself. Not to the kids individually, but the promises were real to me nonetheless. Years earlier I had vowed, “When I make it in the music business, I will not forget where I came from, and I will come back to help the kids in foster care.”
But I hadn’t done it.
When, Jimmy? When are you going to get involved? When are you going to do something? When will you do anything to help someone other than yourself?
I’d had hit songs on the radio and performed in some of the finest concert venues in America. I had been on tour with a country music superstar and had sung and recorded with rock stars. My name and music had topped the prestigious Billboard charts for three straight weeks at one point in my career. By every standard in the music business, I had made it.
Yet I hadn’t kept my promise to those kids. I felt like a fraud.
My heart pounded; my mind raced. You’ve forgotten; haven’t you?
Had I forgotten what it feels like to scavenge for food, shivering in the cold? How could I have forgotten that dreadful rejection and abandonment I felt when my mom drove off into the night, leaving me to fend for myself in a strange city, hundreds of miles from anything vaguely familiar to me? All those times in lonely, dark places, hands and bodies that weren’t mine moving against me? My days spent wandering desolate roads, my nights spent crying tears that refused to form with my eyes wide open, my sleep-deprived body lying awake in fear?
Standing there in my warm house, staring at the frigid conditions outside, I felt the cold reality slap across my face. I haven’t kept my promise.
Oh, sure, I’d performed a few concerts in foster homes; I’d done one not long ago for a small group of kids at HomeBase, a foster care facility in Phoenix. I was always willing and quick to say yes when people asked me to help raise money for foster care–related charities. But I wanted to do something more, something significant. I wanted to make a difference in the lives of kids who have been told over and over that they are nobodies, nothing more than trash, and that their lives are meaningless and don’t count. I wanted to help kids who are lonely, hungry, and cold.
Lonely, hungry, cold. At Christmastime . . . or anytime.
Thoughts of Santa Claus cluttered my mind. But instead of Christmas cheer and gifts, the images reminded me that I was as much of a fake as Santa. Basking in the warmth of my home, with friends and fans galore, I had forgotten what it feels like to be lonely. With my belly full, and probably in need of losing a few pounds after poor eating habits on tour, I had forgotten that horrible ache in my stomach as it screamed for food. And as my hands wrapped around my warm coffee cup, I didn’t even want to think about how it must have felt for those kids who slept outside in the cold last night.
Where’d you go, Jimmy Wayne Barber? What happened to you? Who are you anyhow, and why are you here?
I knew the numbers. Thirty thousand kids every year age out of the foster care system the moment they turn eighteen. Many of them will become homeless, addicted, or imprisoned. Some will never see their twenty-first birthday. I knew I wanted to help those kids the way somebody had helped me. But how? What could I do? It couldn’t be simply another benefit concert. In Nashville we have benefit concerts out the wazoo. Every week a group of music artists is raising money for some worthy cause, and no doubt that is one of the reasons our music prospers. But I wanted to do something more than mere music. I wanted to do something bigger, something on a grander scale that would raise awareness about the plight of foster children who would soon be homeless with nowhere to go.
It has to be something big, something to catch people’s attention.
In what seemed like a shot out of the blue, I suddenly had an idea. In a fraction of a second, I knew! It struck me that one of the foster care homes in which I had done volunteer work was Monroe Harding, located in the posh Nashville community of Green Hills. Another facility was HomeBase in Phoenix. To raise awareness for these foster kids I could walk from Monroe Harding to HomeBase. I realized that would be like walking halfway across America; I could simulate being homeless the entire way. The whole idea seemed to come together from out of nowhere as though all the myriad pieces were being drawn together by a powerful Master Planner.
Thinking of the homeless kid I used to be and the many kids I knew were still out there in the cold—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—I realized God had more for me to do than to hang around drinking expensive coffee. I needed to get back out on the road, this time not in a tour bus but on foot, sleeping wherever I stopped for the night, whether in the home of someone kind enough to invite me in or on the freezing ground. Just as I used to do, when I was homeless and on my own, away from foster care.
The at-risk kids who age out of the foster care system are not able to do it all by themselves; they need somebody to meet them halfway.
I walked back to the kitchen and placed my nearly full cup of coffee in the sink. I picked up the phone and called Jenny Bohler. A journalist who had cut her teeth in the Nashville music community as a writer and editor at Cashbox magazine, Jenny later served as Reba McEntire’s publicist, then moved to MCA Nashville Records, where she continued to promote Reba along with other artists, such as Vince Gill, George Strait, and Trisha Yearwood. She eventually opened her own company and now, along with Mike Kraski, managed my career.
I could anticipate Jenny’s response to what I was about to tell her, so I mentally prepared my case: I’m going to walk halfway across America to raise awareness about foster kids who age out of the system. It won’t take long; I’ve looked at a map, and it doesn’t look that far. I’m pretty sure I can make the walk in three or four months. No, I’m not going to walk halfway across Tennessee. I’m going to walk halfway across America and invite people to join me. I’m going to call the walk Meet Me Halfway.
I rehearsed my lines as Jenny’s phone rang. As well as anyone in the business, Jenny Bohler knew that for me to take a quarter of the year to do a walk like this, I could well be walking away from a thriving career in the music business. Moreover, she had worked hard to help get me what millions of hopeful, struggling music artists would give nearly anything to have—a career making music.
But I knew I would spend most of the winter writing songs, gearing up to go back out on tour in late spring or early summer. Now was the best time.
I already could hear Jenny and other people telling me, “Jimmy, your star is on the rise. Why don’t you wait until you are a superstar, and then do the walk? You can have an even greater influence.” I appreciated their confidence in me, but I was also aware that the music business could be quite fickle. A rising star today can fizzle overnight and be snuffed out in the ashes tomorrow. I had a platform now. I might never be able to create greater visibility than I could right then.
Jenny answered her phone.
“Hey, Jenny; it’s Jimmy.”
“Hi, Jimmy.”
“I’ve got this idea,” I said, making sure I had Jenny’s full attention. “I’m going to walk halfway across America.”
There was a long pause before Jenny finally said, “What?”
ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 2010, WHILE MOST OF AMERICA WAS getting ready to enjoy a smorgasbord of football, food, and halftime shows, at 9:44 a.m. CST—I checked—I left my warm, comfortable townhouse and went across town to Monroe Harding foster care home where, after a brief talk to the kids, I began walking halfway across America.
Along the way I met some good people—some wonderful, fascinating, amazing people—and I had some incredible experiences, some fun times and some downright frightening ones. By the time I finished, I had walked seventeen hundred miles on foot, taking one excruciating step after another, facing everything from freezing temperatures in Tennessee to rattlesnakes on the road in Arizona. And in true dramatic fashion, I traversed the final fifty or sixty miles on a broken foot. It was the most incredible trip of my life.
But it wasn’t the toughest journey I’d ever taken.