AUBURN – Dawn Wilcox didn’t have a problem lifting, moving and bathing her 8-year-old son until last summer.

She was pregnant with her fifth child and her disabled little boy, Jordyn Wilcox-Ames, was 70 pounds and growing. Alone she couldn’t carry him upstairs, to his bedroom or to the home’s only bathtub. She had trouble simply moving him from his wheelchair to his bed.

Wilcox and her family tried to make some adjustments. They turned their first floor dining room into Jordyn’s bedroom, squeezing his large railed bed next to the dinner table.

They bought a plastic tub so Jordyn could have his baths on the first floor, and they jury-rigged a homemade ramp so Wilcox didn’t have to thump Jordyn’s wheelchair up and down the old front porch stairs.

But the solutions were temporary. For the first time in Jordyn’s life, Wilcox started thinking it wasn’t possible to keep her little boy at home.

“I used to lay awake at night and wonder ‘What am I going to do?'” she said.

But this weekend some local churches hope to put an end to that worry for a while. Friends for a Way for Jordyn will hold a benefit concert Saturday to raise money for a permanent ramp, a safety bed and a first floor bathtub.

“The whole purpose of this is to keep Jordyn home,” said Ray Desrosiers, associate pastor at the Auburn Church of the Nazarene.

Wilcox was pregnant with Jordyn when she contracted a parasite from a family cat. The parasite didn’t harm her, she said, but it attacked the baby’s developing tissue.

The infection, toxoplasmosis, ravaged Jordyn’s heart, brain, liver and eyes. After birth, he developed hydrocephalus and shunts had to be installed so fluid could drain from his brain. He went through six of the shunts in two years.

Doctors put in a feeding tube and predicted Jordyn would never really eat. They said he would never sit up, never communicate, never smile. Some people were amazed that Wilcox decided to keep him.

“I just didn’t understand that. He’s not like a puppy. He’s my son,” she said.

Eight years later, Jordyn can’t walk or see or speak in sentences, but he sits up, smiles and eats solid food with a fork. He rides a school bus to take special ed classes at Fairview Elementary School. He giggles and shrieks when he’s happy, which is most of the time.

His favorite place is the swimming pool at the local Y. His favorite people: family.

“He likes all the things other kids like, just in a different way,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox never thought Jordyn’s happy life would have to change. But suddenly last summer he grew so big, and she grew so pregnant, that moving him became an issue.

Anxious about Jordyn’s future and the birth of her baby daughter, Wilcox began attending the Church of the Nazarene across the street. Through other parishioners, Desrosiers heard about her plight.

“God’s meeting the needs. He’s just making us available,” he said.

Desrosiers and others formed Friends for a Way for Jordyn. They came up with a plan for a benefit concert, with Christian music from local praise groups, to raise money for Jordyn’s needs.

At $7 for advance tickets and $8 for tickets at the door, they hope to get enough to build the permanent $1,500 wheelchair ramp. They also want to start a fund for the $7,000 safety bed Jordyn desperately needs and the thousands of dollars it’ll take to install a bathtub in the first floor bathroom.

If successful, it’ll mean that Wilcox and her family won’t have to worry so much. They won’t have to consider a nursing home.

“I think it’ll make all the difference,” Wilcox said.