by Chris Norton
A man walked toward us that I immediately recognized from his online pictures as Mike Barwis. “Chris?” Mike said in his deep, raspy voice as he shook my hand. “Good to meet you. Let’s get going and see what you’ve got.”
I had never met someone as intense as Mike. As he helped me lie on the mat, every movement had a purpose behind it. “Good,” he said as he pulled my legs inward. “See right there? Your muscles are tight. That’s not gonna help. Let’s stretch you out and get you moving.”
I don’t know if it was the way he positioned me or just his huge personality, but my legs moved in ways they hadn’t in years. My one-hour session turned into a four-hour workout. Mike got so excited about what I was able to do that he kept pushing me to do more. He stood right by me, barking, “Come on, Chris! You got it! Push it! Push it!” My body shook as I grunted and scrunched my face, pushing my legs against the press with all my might. Emily got right in there too, joining Mike in cheering for me.
Suddenly, I heard a voice I didn’t recognize. “You can do it! Come on, man!” I turned my head to see Jack Johnson, now standing with Mike and Emily. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I pushed for one more rep. I’m a hard worker, but somehow Mike and his trainers pushed me beyond even what I thought I was capable of. Before I left, Mike even told me, “If you were in this program for five or six weeks, you’d be a changed man.” I could not wait to find out how great that change could be!
EMILY
I didn’t know Chris in his days as an athlete. I had seen pictures and heard stories from his parents about how long and hard he worked in every practice and beyond, stories that were pretty easy to believe because he was so intense in the workouts I helped him with at Luther. Seeing him working out at Barwis Methods for the first time, though, went beyond anything I’d seen in Chris before. He lit up in a new way, as though he was finally back in his element. Chris was having fun, but he was also being pushed outside his comfort zone. I’m not a trainer, but even I could see that something good was happening here.
These are the people who are going to get Chris to walk across the stage at his gradation, I thought as I watched him with a smile. We have to get him here.
When the evaluation workout ended and we left Barwis Methods, Chris and I looked at one another and had one of those moments where you can practically read each other’s minds. I knew he was thinking what I was thinking.
“We’re moving here,” I said. “You have to work out with these people.”
Chris just grinned.
Of course this meant we had a lot of things to figure out.
CHRIS
Before meeting Mike and trying Barwis Methods, I was starting to believe that walking on my own was a long way off or wouldn’t happen without a scientific breakthrough. After that initial workout, both Emily and I could see me walking again in a matter of months, no longer than a year. I felt I had come this far, sacrificed and worked harder than ever before, and now I was so close. I just had to figure out how to move to Michigan. The biggest thing stopping me was finding someone to move there with me. I can’t live on my own, can’t afford to live on my own, and would need someone to completely sacrifice five months of their life for me.
Who would do that?
The only person who offered was Emily, and frankly there was no one else in the world I would rather have with me for the journey. Neither of us had planned on living together before marriage. But on a pragmatic level, the move to Michigan would only work if I had in-home care. Plus, my insurance would be able to pay Emily for this full-time care. So we talked to our parents, made our plans, and starting getting ready for the big move.
EMILY
Before he could move to Plymouth, Chris first had to finish his coursework at Luther. He was on schedule to finish all his classes that fall, then officially graduate the following May. We planned to move to Michigan in January so Chris could spend the spring semester working out with Mike and getting in peak condition to walk across the stage.
However, moving to Michigan meant putting my goals on hold to help Chris pursue his. I had graduated from UNI the year before Chris was scheduled to graduate. My whole family, plus Whittley and Chris, came to my graduation. It was the first time Chris and Whittley officially met. On paper I was ready to start my career in helping kids like I had always dreamed of. Earlier that year I finished my last semester of classes and found an internship at a group home in Waverly, Iowa. It was exactly the kind of place where I had imagined myself working. When I landed the internship, I hoped it might lead to a full-time job. I had always been drawn to teenagers and could not wait to help change their lives for the better.
But my experience at the group home quickly showed me how far the reality could be from the dream. I will never forget walking into the group home for the first time. So many girls had scars covering their bodies from self-harming. There was one girl I was instantly drawn to—Sophia. Her body was covered in scars. I mean scars on top of scars. “Hate” was carved on her leg, covering her entire thigh. It was harrowing to see the kind of pain these girls lived with every day.
I had yet to learn that the surface scars did not go nearly as deep as the emotional ones. Instead of trusting God to heal these kids’ hearts and teaching the kids to lean on him, I took on the responsibility of changing their lives myself. I had no idea how to handle and cope with the most terrible things you could ever imagine. I felt it in a way that shattered my heart and got me so down. Not only was I so sad that kids had gone through these situations, but I began to feel more and more anger toward the people who did such awful things to their children.
While working at the group home, I met kids who had survived sexual abuse, gang violence, and crazy situations that I could not even fathom. There were so many times I witnessed girls jumping on top of one another in all-out fights and screaming at the staff, threatening to kill them. Once a girl actually attempted to choke one of the staff members. There were many times I caught girls cutting themselves, no matter how vigilant we were at trying to keep them away from anything that could hurt them. One girl I was especially close with found a piece of glass and sliced her wrist so deep that I saw parts of her that only a doctor should see. I can still smell the sickening metallic scent of blood as it soaked the sweatshirt she used to cover up her arm and dripped onto the floor.
Suicide attempts were common among the girls living at the group home. I came in the morning after staff members caught Sophia, the girl covered in scars, jumping off the gym roof trying to kill herself. Another time I rode to the hospital with a girl who had swallowed batteries. There was another situation in which a girl had taken the string out of her hoodie and was trying to choke herself. I was the one who found her and had to scream for the staff to help get it off her.
None of the girls ever seemed to get better. Previously, I had this God-given ability to get through to people on a deep level and could see progress right away. I felt God called me to this line of work. Now I felt as though I was making small impacts to get the girls through their days but not having breakthroughs. I imagined myself getting these girls to experience breakthrough after breakthrough and changing the trajectory of their lives. I began to feel hopeless and didn’t know how to process it. Every day when I went into work, I braced myself for new levels of bad. What are you doing, God? I thought. I know you want me to help these kids, and I want to do it, but it’s not working. I literally can’t do anything to help these girls.
Even as I became frustrated by how ill-equipped I felt to actually make a difference in any of these girls’ lives, I still loved the one-on-one moments with them. There were many times when I successfully calmed one of them down or talked runaway girls into coming back to the group home. As I thought about what these girls had seen and experienced, I wondered what kind of lives they could possibly have beyond this place. Before I started working there, I thought that if I could just get through to these kids, then they could go on to live perfectly normal li
ves. After a few months, I realized how laughably naïve I’d been. These kids were never going to magically get better and be free from their emotional scars. How could they when they had been through so much trauma? They had scars that were so deep. No one could come out of that and be the same person. For the first time, I wondered if I could make a real difference, or if I could even handle the trauma and chaos of working with troubled kids.
After my internship ended, I moved home instead of applying for a full-time job. I told everyone I needed some time to figure things out, but deep down I knew something had changed inside me. Where I once felt so much empathy and compassion, I was becoming numb and disconnected. My mind-set only got worse when I received an unexpected phone call while I was visiting my grandparents in Wisconsin.
“Emily?” My heart skipped as I recognized the voice. I could tell she was in tears, but she barely spoke.
“Whittley, is that you? Where are you?”
“I’m outside of a gas station.” She paused. “For now.”
A knot formed in my stomach. “What happened? Tell me. What are you going to do?”
Whittley didn’t say a word for what felt like forever before finally uttering a short, “Nothing.”
“Come on, Whittley. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
She sighed. “I stole some pills, okay?”
“Whittley, did you take any of those pills? Whittley, please don’t do it. You have no idea what I would do if I lost you. I love you more than you could ever imagine. You are so special, and God has such a great life planned for you. I know it’s so hard right now, but Whittley, we will get through this together. I will do anything for you. Whittley, please, I beg you, don’t give up!!”
I heard her sniffle on the other end of the phone. “I have to go. I love you, Emily,” she whispered.
“Whittley!” I yelled. My heart pounded as I immediately called the main number of the group home where she was staying. “I think Whittley is trying to hurt herself. She just told me she stole some pills, and I know she has a history of suicide attempts.”
One of the staff members confirmed my worst fears. Whittley had run away earlier in the day, and they just received a call that she was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Someone at the gas station had noticed something was wrong with her and called the police. They told me they were taking her to the Dubuque Hospital. I raced to meet her there. I was on my way when I got another call telling me she’d been transferred to the University of Iowa Hospital. Her condition was more severe than they thought.
I tried to focus on the road as tears streamed down my cheeks. All this time I’ve spent with her, all the effort I poured into her, and she still ended up right here, in the hospital from a suicide attempt.
By the time I arrived at the hospital, Whittley showed signs of improvement. However, they still transferred her from the emergency room to the intensive care unit. When they let me see her, she looked like a ghost. Her skin was so pale in the fluorescent lighting, and the room was silent except for the beeping of the machines tracking her vitals. Doctors had given her charcoal to help her get rid of the toxins from the pills, but she clearly was not well. She wouldn’t even look at me.
I felt numb as I drove home that night. Whittley had been in my life for six years. I had been there for her when no one else was. Even after I moved off to college, the two of us stayed in touch. It just wasn’t enough. I couldn’t save Whittley or any of the kids from the group home. What was the point of even trying? My dream, the thing I had worked for my whole life, was crashing down around me. In that moment I began to build a wall around myself. What if caring so much about others is just going to hurt me? What if Whittley had succeeded in killing herself?
For the first time in my life, I questioned whether the pain of pouring myself into others was worth it. I asked God why he chose me to care this much. Why did everyone around me seem to have a normal life, worrying more about themselves than others. Their lives seemed so much easier. I was always putting others’ needs in front of my own and internalizing their pain. Now I felt weighed down by their problems and mentally paralyzed. Another layer of the wall around my heart went up.
I had to have that wall. It protected me from the pain, but it also left me empty. I didn’t know who I was any longer. One night I poured my heart out in my journal:
I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I’m so lost and so confused. I feel depressed and like I’m not the same person. I’ve honestly been going through the hardest time in my life, and I don’t know why. I push you away, God, when I need you more than I have ever needed you. I need help. I need guidance. I feel like I’m starting to lose my purpose, and that’s who I am. I feel like I don’t care as much. I feel so alone, and I think I’ve felt that way my whole life. I’ve always been the one who does everything for other people. I’ve always been a very strong person, so people just automatically assume that I’m okay. I’m also a very closed person and keep everything inside. It’s a horrible way to be, because I’m not okay, and nobody knows it.
Then came the opportunity to help Chris reach his goal of walking at graduation. I jumped at it. Sure, I had to put my life on hold so I could help Chris, but I didn’t even know what my life was supposed to be about any longer. Moving to Michigan was a welcome distraction. Someday I needed to figure out what to do with my life, but that could wait. Right now I had to find an apartment, shop for furniture, pick out decorations to make a bland apartment feel more like home, and figure out Chris’s training schedule. I had too much to do to worry about my own future. I threw myself into the move because, honestly, that was all I had.
CHRIS
I could tell something seemed off about Emily when she moved home after she graduated from UNI. She stopped running, which she had always loved doing, and she seemed tired all the time. Little incidents set her off more than they used to. I chalked up most of this to the normal letdown of graduating from college and not having a job right away. Some of my friends went through it. Plus, Whittley was struggling, and I knew it affected Emily more than she let on. She avoided talking about it because it was too upsetting and stressful for her. When Emily blew up at me over something small, I told myself it was her way of dealing with everything else going on in her life.
But I couldn’t explain away the biggest change I saw in her. Her spark of passion was missing. Emily makes things happen. I figured when she moved home she would start a blog or run a business making videos of people’s family stories, an idea she had mentioned to me before. She did end up making a video for her grandparents, but the project stopped there. She also wasn’t looking for opportunities to help others like she used to. I knew she had sent a message to an alternative school asking about volunteering, but when they didn’t get back to her right away, she gave up. It seemed like she was in a holding pattern until we moved to Michigan. While that seemed like something most people might do in her situation, Emily wasn’t most people. This wasn’t the girl I’d fallen in love with. And I was worried.
I didn’t say anything to her about my concerns because I didn’t want to be pushy. I tried to gently ask questions here and there to see if she was getting back to her old self, but I backed off pretty quickly so as not to irritate her. Every once in a while, she’d say she didn’t feel like herself. She couldn’t put her finger on why or what could be going on, though. She told me one day that she was going to get her thyroid levels checked out. Her mom and sister both have thyroid problems, and Emily thought that might explain why she had felt more annoyed than usual. But all her tests came back normal.
Although Emily was having more moments of frustration, she was still the girl I’d fallen in love with. During a weekend stay together at Emily’s parents’ house during the time we were talking about moving to Michigan, Emily got a look in her eyes I knew all too well. It meant she was up to something.
“Hey,” she said with a sly smile. “Let’s take a step.”
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“No, let’s not,” I said with a laugh. “We’re in the kitchen. It’s not a good idea.”
Emily wasn’t giving up. I could see her slipping into coach mode. “Come on,” she said. “Take a step. Just try. Just this once.”
“I don’t know. We’ve never been able to do it before.”
“I’ve got you!” she said, her voice getting louder. “I promise. I’ve got you. Just take a step.”
When Emily slips into coach mode, you listen. So Emily pulled me up out of the chair to a stand. Emily stood in front of me, her hands on my midsection. I took a step. Then another. I wobbled slightly and felt her hands keeping me balanced. But we did it.
We walked all the way into the piano room and collapsed with laughter on the couch. “I can’t believe we just did that,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief.
I told myself we’d have a lot more moments like this after we moved to Michigan. She seemed just as committed to getting me walking as I was, and she seemed excited about making a fresh start in a new place. We just have to make it to January, I thought. Everything would be fine once we got to Michigan.
In some ways that was true. But in other ways, all we did was delay the inevitable.
10
Olympic-Level Training
EMILY
Chris and I didn’t celebrate the New Year with brunch and mimosas. We didn’t spend the day watching college football championships. Bright and early that morning, we were on our way to start the next chapter of our lives in Michigan.
I had found an apartment for us online after a seemingly endless search. Finding a place that could accommodate Chris’s wheelchair was a much bigger challenge than I had anticipated. It should not be that hard to find an apartment that’s accessible to people with physical disabilities, but apparently it is. I was on the phone for hours, asking apartment managers about their door frame widths or whether there was an open spot under the bathroom sink. We never did find a place with a roll-in shower, but there were so few options that Chris decided he could make do with a bathtub. When I found an apartment that came close to what we were looking for, I jumped on it. But we didn’t see it until the day we moved in. We took a leap of faith and hoped our trust would pay off.