The God Of All Comfort

Even though we still weren’t sure if the whole pilot-thing for Jeffrey was going to work out (Will Jeffrey’s Dreams Be Dashed?), we needed to keep moving forward to see about getting him someplace to live down in Arizona.  Still a lot of question marks, no doubt, but did we trust God or not?  So we scheduled a quick trip down to Prescott to meet the new disability head, and preview the rooms available for wheelchairs.

We also scheduled a few meetings with a couple nursing agencies to see what their policies were as far as providing part-time care for Jeffrey while at the college.

It was mid-May and the clock was definitely ticking – very fast at times!  It seemed like I was going cuckoo trying to remember to call everyone I needed to, so that we could get as much done as we possibly could during this trip.

A couple days before we left for Prescott, I was pacing around the living room floor with the phone glued to my ear (what did we do before we had cordless phones?), when all of a sudden I noticed as I was rubbing my neck that there was a lump which seemed to have come out of nowhere – what in the world was that about?

Well it would just have to wait until we got back.

When we arrived at ERAU, we were greeted by the new disability advocate for the campus – and he was incredible!  He also had a disability, and he knew in’s-and-out’s that we had never even thought of.

He told us there were 3 different dorm rooms which were ADA approved, and brought us to them one-by-one.

The first one was the newest and seemed definitely the best choice for Jeffrey, but we were informed they were the upperclassmen dorms – however they could probably get Jeffrey in there.  Of course that would mean that he would be by none of the incoming freshmen.

The second one was a modular unit way on the outskirts of the campus.  It was pretty old and beat-up, yet the room for Jeffrey was much larger than the newer one we had looked at, and the bathroom would give him lots of space to maneuver around.  The problem?  He would have to cross a pretty busy road, which our disability advocate informed us was a road that the kids sometimes drove pretty fast on.

Made me a nervous wreck…

The final one was older, as well, yet he’d be closer to the classrooms and he would even have his own private entry which was good as the main entry through the kitchen was pretty tight.  It was also a very popular dorm with the freshmen, which would be nice for Jeffrey.  But the sidewalks leading up to the dorm were pretty cracked and beat up, and the mommy in me pictured Jeffrey tipping over easily in his chair.

Yes, I was starting to stress out again big time.

None of us really could agree on which of the 3 would be best, so we said we needed time to pray and really wanted Jeffrey to come to his own decision.

Then we met with a couple nursing agencies, and again none of them were perfect – but we found one that seemed like it would work.  They said they’d never done anything quite like that before, but were willing to try it.

Yikes.

As we returned home after our whirlwind trip I again found myself sinking down into a hole.  We now had with us a whole new pile of paperwork which needed to be completed soon, and I just was having a hard time keeping my head above the water.

However Gary remained steadfast in his faith, and kept reminding me of how all things are possible with God (Mark 10:27).  Then I came upon some prayer notes I had written previously about how I needed to “trust God more and not focus on circumstances.”

Oh, yeah.

But then I started thinking about how we also needed to get a permanent address for Jeffrey in order to start getting his SSI payments set up.  Was a college dorm address going to be sufficient?  And what if it wasn’t?  What would we do then?

Oh, brother…

Then I started rubbing my neck again, and noticed that the lump seemed to have gotten a bit larger in the past week, so I called my doctor and made an appointment.

Why did I have to deal with going to the doctor now?