u/eccentric_bee

My grandson has ARFID, and during a particularly stressful period a couple of years ago, his list of safe foods narrowed down to about ten things.

We've always kept a list on the refrigerator that changes as he does. There are foods on the list that are safe, foods he can sometimes eat, and foods he thinks he might like to try again someday. Things move around on the list. A food being safe last month doesn't necessarily mean it's safe today, and "not now" doesn't have to mean "never."

During this particular stretch, he was often eating an entire meal of one thing. If crackers felt safe, he'd eat crackers. If one particular kind of chicken was easy for him, that might be the meal.

So I bought six cheap little bento lunchboxes from Walmart and started keeping them in the refrigerator.

I didn't use them to introduce new foods. I filled each compartment with things that were already safe on his list, but tried to make each box as nutritionally broad as I could within those limits. A little protein if there was one he'd eat, a carb, fruit, or whatever else was currently possible.

The boxes were smaller than his appetite usually was, but that turned out to be a good thing. He could get one whenever he wanted, and if he was still hungry he could have another as long as the first was pretty much gone. Sometimes he'd eat two or three.

I tried to keep four ready in the refrigerator and rotate them so the oldest went first. When he finished one, he washed the box and it went back into circulation.

It also accidentally solved another problem: sometimes he doesn't want foods touching. Bento compartments made that a nonissue without much stress. With these ones, each compartment sealed when the box was closed.

Mostly, though, I think it helped because food was just there. He didn't have to decide what meal he could manage, ask somebody to make something, or confront a big plate of one food. He could open the refrigerator, choose a box, and eat.

We still use the system when he asks, like during holidays or school testing. His safe food list is considerably broader now, but having a few little boxes of food he knows he can eat continues to be useful at times. He'll just ask if we could do bentos for a while, or I'll suggest it if I see him having single-food meals again.

ARFID looks so different from person to person that I don't know whether this would help anyone else's family, or anyone else with ARFID. But it helped mine, so I thought I'd share.

I miss prayer. Intercessory prayer, specifically.  Not because I now think anyone is listening, but because back then I believed I was moving the needle.

When someone I loved was sick, or a family had lost everything, or there was another war, another hurricane, another tragedy, I could pray. Alone, I could imagine my concern mattered. In church, when everyone bowed their heads (or, since I was Pentecostal, stood with our hands raised and voices loud) and we prayed "in one accord," it felt as though we were leaning together against the universe, trying to nudge it toward mercy.

I miss that feeling, even though I now believe it was only noise.

What I don't miss is what had to be true for it to work.

Imagine a child trapped beneath the rubble after an earthquake. If God could save that child, why would he wait? Why should the timing depend on whether enough people prayed, or prayed sincerely enough, or with enough faith, or quoted the right scriptures, or cried loudly enough? Why would a loving God need to be persuaded to do the good thing?

The older I became, the more prayer began to feel less like a relationship and more like a spell. Say the right words. Gather enough believers. Believe hard enough. Be righteous enough. Somehow the universe would respond. It started to feel uncomfortably close to magic, not because it was supernatural, but because the power seemed to lie in performing the ritual correctly.

And then there was the picture of God himself. We were taught to pray in Jesus' name. Somewhere along the way, I realized I had begun thinking of Jesus as the one who actually liked us, the one who stood between humanity and an otherwise unapproachable God. I remember wondering, in a way I hardly dared admit, why a loving Father needed his own Son to persuade him to be merciful to his beloved creation. It felt less like reconciliation and more like asking the kind uncle to convince the irritable patriarch.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the impulse behind prayer was ever the problem. When people suffer, we desperately want our love to matter. We want to believe our concern can reach across the distance and do some good.

I still want that. I just don't believe goodness waits to be asked before it acts.

What I miss isn't believing in God so much as believing that concern itself could change the world.

I'm still looking for whatever replaces that. I’m looking for what is beyond ”thoughts and prayers,” and for some way for love to travel farther than my own internal voice.