Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 115 | The American Dream - Chris & Emily Norton Are Living Theirs...

Episode Date: June 1, 2019

After a life-altering tackle on the college football field, Chris Norton was told he would never move again. Through grit and faith, he retrained his body and spirit to walk the most important yardage of his life: seven yards down the aisle with his bride, Emily Summers. Watch and share the trailer of their upcoming movie here: https://7yardsfilm.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seven longest yards. Chris and Emily Norton are here here on Chewing the Fat. And I started reading the book and I realized, wow, the struggles that I've been through and are going through, nothing. Nothing. So Chris and Emily are here in the Chewing the Fat Studios to tell me first, what happened? Yeah. What happened? So just 18-year-old kid, October 16, 2010.

I'm sprinting down the field and I see this opening and I'm going to make the tackle and I make a diving play at the guys's legs and I miss time my jump and my head collided right with his legs and instantly I lose all feeling and movement from my neck down. I suffered a severe spinal cord injury. I'm flown out and I'm given a 3% chance to ever regain any feeling or movement back below my neck which I thought was the end for me. Boy, no kidding. As, you know, like I started out with, you know, we all have our struggles and, you know, others obviously more than more than most of us think. But in the beginning, you talk about the obstacles in the very beginning is when you realized how important your outlook was. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, you know, my whole 18 years of life, I was consumed with my athletic ability, my identity and my physicality is this identity of being a man, as protector. and then everything just got thrown away. Like everything that I believed in to be true about who I am and the strength that it comes from was just gone.

And I had to learn to focus on the things that I do have and when I can do and when I can offer. And I realized that people value that. They didn't value how fast I can move or how strong I was. They valued about who I was as a person. And I began to focus on those things and just staying positive, focusing on all of the blessings I have in my life. And that gave me energy.

It gave me motivation. It gave me a positive outlook. And it gave me the courage to keep going. That's got to be hard on an everyday level. Right? I mean, yes, that sounds great. And, you know, overall, that's what you grab onto. But day to day living, you got to think twice about that sometimes.

You've got to let yourself fly. into that negativity, right? Oh, yeah, you're human. Anybody's going to feel bad or sorry about something, especially when you go through a life-altering situation. And it was really tough in the beginning. Going to sleep at night was the worst. I cried myself to sleep.

I'm wondering, how could I ever live a life like this? I'm immobile from my neck down. I can't do anything that I love to do. Like, how am I going to ever live a life that I want to live? And it was tough. And you just, during the day, you just gravitated towards things that would distract you. That would help you get just an inch closer to your goal and your dreams.

And that's really what I consumed myself. I had to. It was like a survival instinct. Otherwise, I would have just fallen apart. So the book, the seven longest yards, you two are obviously, you know, I'm married. And we'll get into that a little bit. But the book comes out in July, right?

So you can pre-order the seven, longest yards right now on Amazon or wherever you, wherever you purchase your books. You can pre-order it right now. As I was looking at this, I'd kind of like to maybe just go through a few of the, just a few of the chapters and have you give a one sentence, maybe a run-on sentence recap of what you felt when you were writing these chapters. Like the 3% chance we kind of covered that. Let's talk a little bit about finding Emily.

And maybe we just reversed that too in Emily. finding Chris too. So we get both of you involved, finding each other. You know, the chapter obviously is finding Emily. And,

oh, see, my heart breaks for that. But really, you found each other, right? Yeah, we do. We definitely found each other. We came across each other

online and had an instant connection. Emily would hit, like ask all these hard hitting questions, like really personal questions. And I didn't take offense to it.

I was really open to it. Just ask me, what was it like going through your injury right after your life was just flipped upside down? and it allowed me to be vulnerable and open up about myself and it just made me more comfortable in my own skin.

So kudos to her for just being really personable. So you met online, right? And you met online through which dating app? I mean, what app are we looking at? You know, we just say, you know, it doesn't add anything to the story. So we're just like, you know, it's just online. Yeah. We just leave it at that.

Really? We just leave it at that because, I mean, I'm thinking swipe right. is all I'm saying. You know, that's not a bad guess. That's all I'm saying. Okay, we'll just leave it there. That's fine. We'll leave it there.

All right. So now over the years you talk about one of the chapters is Olympic level training. Now, you even talk about not being able to not being able to move from the neck down. But you at one point in a 3% chance to even really do anything, right? I mean, be any kind of a productive life at all. Olympic level training got you to wear

what did that do for you and how are I mean are you still doing it are you doing that is that what's keeping you going is that what's that what's is that what assisting you so I mean that first couple of years like that's what I was obsessed with like I thought I have to be able to walk in order for me to be happy and live an independent life

like that's what I need and so like found this great gym and borrowess methods, and Emily is the one that discovered it for me, and just really both of us focused in on, you know, four to six hours of training every single day and just maximizing every single opportunity to just give as much recovery back as I could. And it led to being able to walk across the stage of my college graduation, which was four and a half years after my injury, and I walked across with Emily. And I proposed to her actually the day before, which is just over a little over four years ago. Wow.

proposed to her, which I was way more nervous for that proposal than actually walking across the stage. But it went really well. It was a moment that, you know, we thought it was incredible, but then it just went viral and went all across the world. So when you, you're going through all this struggle, you're still going to school. I mean, you're still studying and doing your Olympic level training and you're trying to graduate and your goal is I'm going to graduate, but I'm going to walk across the stage.

And you did it, right? I mean, you hit the goal. Yeah, it's tremendous. hit the goal and it was just, you know, just a dream come true. It really was. And you got married the next day, right? Right after you graduated, walked across the stage after you proposed to or you were married just like that and nothing bad happened in the walk up to the wedding, right? That's how a fairy tale. Right. That's what I should go, right? I mean, but it didn't. Oh, I must have read a different book. Yeah, this is a true story where, you know, not a fairy tale story,

but it's very real and raw. And I think that's where people are really going to enjoy about it. As we go down here, let's talk a little bit about finding faith again and how important that was to both of you. Yeah, I mean, that was so important for us. We both grew up in families that faith was important. But when college happened and it kind of just feared away from us, I went through a really dark time of depression and struggling with that right after the graduation walk. And so I open up a lot about that in this book, which I've never opened up about before. But I know that there's so many people out there who are struggling.

I know what it's like. And I never want anyone to ever feel like they're alone, to feel like there's no hope because that's where I was. And just really what I went away from my faith for a long time because it was too hard to face what was happening. Like I didn't know why I was feeling the way I did. I grew up in a great family, had a great life. I really immersed myself in trying to help other people and help other kids who weren't as fortunate. You obviously were in love. You felt like that life was there and you're still covering in a corner not wanting to face the day.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I buried it down, extremely independent, wanted to do everything myself. Felt like I couldn't go to God or anybody else. Nobody knew because I had this view in my mind that I absolutely had to do this myself. And if I didn't, then I'd be in trouble in life. if I had something really bad happen. If anything ever happened that was so bad,

if I couldn't figure this out, when I've gone through nothing difficult, then I'm in trouble for life, which prevented me from getting help for a really long time because I had that view. But once I started, we started going back to church, and that was the turning point where I was able to get this strength

to go actually and get medical, like mental health therapist, get on some medication to level out everything, and it changed it all. But I suffered for way too long, because of how stubborn I was. I mean, that's great that you're able to talk about it now, and hopefully that will help a lot.

Look, you know, and then as we build up to the wedding and you obviously made it to the wedding and it was a wonderful thing, walking down the aisle, right? I mean, the same as the college walk down the aisle with the wife, right? Yep. And another huge goal met, met. But you also talk about fostering children. Is that still important?

in your life now as it was when you wrote the book? Oh yeah. Absolutely. So we've actually adopted five kids. We have five girls from the ages of three all the way up to 20 years old. And we've adopted them out of foster kids. And I do mean good Lord. We love it though. We just actually a few weeks ago I said goodbye to two little kids that we had, we are continuing fostering. So we had seven kids at one time, which sounds insane and we never thought we would ever do that. But we just stretched ourselves and stretched what we believe God's calling us to do. And it's amazing to be able to just pour love into these kids who don't know what love is, don't know that they're special. And just helping them to realize those things, there's nothing greater.

How difficult is it? I'm going to take a side note for, how difficult is it now when you're, when you're fostering children, the opportunity for them to be adopted and move away from you is there, right, all the time. I mean, that's part of the deal, which is why you ended up adopting some because you don't want to see them be adopted by anyone else, right? How difficult is it to let them go? Oh, it's extremely difficult. We have actually fostered 17 kids, so we've said goodbye to 12 of those. And you love them like they're your kids.

Like some of them are harder than others. Some of them you have greater connections with. Some of them are like, get the hell out. Thanks for stopping. No, it can be hard at times for sure with their behaviors. but it is like that we've never had with any of the kids ever where it felt like this is not worth it to say goodbye. We look at it as it's all about your perspective that you have and just knowing that you did what you could with the time you had. Because the goal of foster care is to reunify them with their family.

So a lot of our kids, we stay in contact with still and have become really close with their families with their parents. And I've been able to support them, which makes it easier when they do say bye. And just knowing that you did what you could and you made an impact. And the kids have, they've made transformations in our home when they just get love and support. And it has not been easy and it takes a lot of time. But it's amazing to see those transformations. And you know that you impacted their life. That's fantastic.

Okay. So now the book, Seven Longest Yards. And Chris and Emily Norton are joining us here in the break room on chewing the fat. Now, as I was going through this, it seems to me that this book, and you can pre-order it now, it'll be available. if there's still bookstores in July left in America, you can go ahead and find it there, or you can just order it online and just have it delivered to you when it's available

is the easiest thing to do, the seven longest yards by Chris and Emily Norton. As I was going through it, all I could picture was this being a television show made for TV, made for Hallmark. So are you, is the screenplay already been written? Are you, you've already cashed the check? You're already ready for the TV?

Who's going to play? play who's going to do who that has to have been an already done deal right because if it isn't we need to talk well you know what it is really exciting is that we do have a documentary coming out called seven yards the chris norton story which uh you know obviously it's a documentary form not a hallmark right the theater film but i really excited it's the beginning we can so we can still get the screenplay going for the for the the the masterpiece on hallmark yeah exactly and the group is based in Dallas too, which is where we're at now. They're a great group, photolanthropy,

and so we're excited for when that eventually will air on people's screens. When are they looking at for that a couple years away from today? Yeah, we're probably a couple years out. They're in post-edits and pretty exciting. Oh, wow. We've done a bunch of filming already. That's great. Pretty exciting conversations behind the scene with distribution,

but there's nothing right now that we can announce. Well, I mean, it's a start. You've begun. We'll talk later. All right. So with the book, the seven longest year, What's the number one thing you want people to take away from the book? The number one thing.

I mean, there's all kinds of things that you want people to take away with love and coming back to, coming back to faith. But if pressured, the number one thing, do you want people to take away from this, Chris? I would say that our lowest moments can be the source of our greatest blessings. I think that there's so many times where we're going to go through valleys, we're going to go through just real difficult moments,

and we can actually use those as a source of strength and a source of blessing later on. But we just got, you just got to keep going. Emily? Yeah, I would say that. Don't take what you said. I won't. I would say that sometimes you can,

you might feel like it's the end, but God could create a new beginning and use the pain that you're going through and turn it into a purpose that can be greater than what you ever imagined. I never thought that I would be me again when I was struggling that time. I felt like there wasn't hope, but there is absolutely always hope.

And God will work everything together the way it's supposed to. Chris and Emily Norton, the book The Seven Longest Yards. Thanks for coming on chewing the fat today. It was great, nice meeting. Yeah, thank you. An amazing couple, just an amazing couple. Remember to subscribe to chewing the fat. Thanks for listening to the Saturday broadcast.

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