The Worst Day of His Life Led Him Straight into Wife's Arms
October 16, 2010, became the worst day of Chris Norton’s life. But he also knows if that night had never happened, he would have never met his wife.
He had just begun his freshman year at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. He was on the football team and was playing in a game against Central College.
In the third quarter, Chris was in the middle of a play that he had practiced over and over again. He was trained to do it well, but something went wrong and before he knew it, he was lying on the ground, unable to move.
He remembers it feeling like “someone had turned the power off to my body.” The stadium was completely silent.
“I’m trying to push off the ground, but nothing’s working. I prayed to God to please let me just get up and walk off the field,” he said.
He was airlifted to a nearby Mayo Clinic and was told the devastating news no young athlete wants to hear. Doctors only gave him a 3 percent chance of moving anything below his neck again. He had fractured his C3-C4 vertebrae.
Norton refused to be in the 97 percentile. “I had to relearn how to move different parts of my body with what was connected. To be upright, to be standing was like a sense of freedom,” he said.
He began his intensive physical therapy with the help and support of his close-knit family. In August 2011, he had improved enough to be able to go back to school.
Of course, Chris worried about the challenges that his physical state would cause, but he was worried that he would never be able to find a young woman who could look past his wheelchair.
“I wanted to be a dad and have a wife,” he said. “But I didn’t want to burden somebody with everything I needed.”
After going on a few dates that didn’t go anywhere, he decided to sign up for an online dating site. That’s when he met Emily Summers. “It was love at first sight for me,” he said with confidence.
Their connection was strong and immediate. She was everything he had ever dreamed of: beautiful, compassionate, close to her family, and a hard worker.
Although Chris’s injury was tragic, it led him into the arms of a woman who loved him and supported him for who he is, despite his physical disabilities.
As his graduation in May of 2015 grew closer, Chris knew he wanted to walk across the stage. So Emily helped him while he worked toward his goal.
She said, “It was incredible to see how motivated he was. When he sets his mind to something, he does it. That’s why I fell in love with him.”
The night before his graduation, he proposed and Emily helped her new fiance walk across the stage to get his diploma.
Their next goal? To walk down the aisle together.
On April 21, 2018, they were able to do just that!
“It’s amazing what happens when you lean on God, keep the faith and work as hard a you can!! God has an incredible plan for each and everyone of us,” he wrote on an Instagram post.
“You can take your challenges and turn it into something so beautiful.”
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