Torch, Fall/Winter 2010

Fall–Winter 2010 | TORCH 31 USED BY PERMISSION, COPYRIGHT 2010 | THE GRAND RAPIDS PRESS my dad left. I used to ask my mom, ‘When is Dad coming home?’ I remember the day she said, ‘Arlan, he’s not coming back.’” He was eight. “For a while, I blocked out the fun things we used to do together,” he says of his father. “I had to distance myself to stop the pain. I see kids do that all the time. They say about their parents, ‘I don’t care. I don’t love ’em.’ They push it away so the hurt is not there.” Years later, as part of the introspection he did in seminary, he started allowing himself to feel. He decided to visit his father, who had moved to Colorado. “It was New Year’s Day,” he recalls. “He said, ‘I’m proud of you. I know I wasn’t there for you.’ I said, ‘Dad I love you.’ That April, he died.” “I say to kids, ‘I know you’re angry with your father right now. I can tell you that I feel better now because I worked things out with my dad.’” He sighs. “These kids should not have to be this grown-up.” A Worthwhile Investment Palmer is single but hoping to be married one day. He was almost engaged once, but the differences, he thought, were too big. He’s fundamental Baptist, and she was Pentecostal. “I know now that God is bigger than all that,” he says and smiles. “I like to think there’s still hope for me.” Meanwhile, he stays pretty busy. One of his foster kids recently called to check in. “He said, ‘Arlan, didn’t you adopt me?’ I told him, ‘No, Dan — you were my foster child.’” “He said, ‘All these years I thought you adopted me.’ I said, ‘Well, my goal was to treat you as if you were my own.’” Palmer laughs his big laugh. “I guess it worked.” Arlan Palmer ’84 graduated from Cedarville University with a double major in communication arts and preseminary Bible. He now serves as diversity coordinator and chaplain at Wedgwood Christian Services. He is also the neighborhood chaplain at Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You may contact him at revpal@sbcglobal.net. Terri Finch Hamilton is a reporter with The Grand Rapids Press . Her article first appeared in the June 6, 2010, edition and is reprinted with permission. You may contact her at thamilton@grpress.com .