The Lorenz family

Warning: over the next few weeks there will be several "end times" blogs which will help me prepare to leave this place I have lived for 47 years.


For some reason this weekend, I have been thinking about and grieving over leaving my friends Ronnie and Darla Lorenz.

My very thoughts have been: "I will never again have friends who have loved me so dearly and taken care of me so completely."

Ronnie and Darla were babies when we met them (in their 20's) at the Minter Lane Church. We helped grow that church together as we grew in friendship. We weathered new youth ministers, slow growth of the church and the marriage crisis of close friends. Eventually, because of the youth progrom, they left for Highland.

But a new link was forged when Sam persuaded Darla to become his secretary at Bowie Elementary School. Despite her early protest, it proved to be a partnership made in heaven. She was still his secretary at Austin Elementary School when he died.

Ronnie and Darla saw me through Sam's death and the aftermath with loving hearts, although they were grieving terribly too. Ronnie quickly became Brandon's surrogate father. They took Sam's place at Brandon's Senior Dinner and graduation at ACU. We got through what could have been a huge problem with Brandon later ( a problem which ultimately remade BST into the man of God he is today). Then I got cancer in 1997, and again, they were there. Darla was with me when I had to call Brandon and tell him I had cancer. After the hospital at Darla's insistence, I spent several days in their home.

I have watched Ronnie grow from a young man to full maturity as an elder at Highland--highly respected by the church and all over Abilene as a man of ethics and compassion. Darla has become not only an excellent school secretary, but she is also a spiritual leader in her school.

Darla always checks up on me at least every other day. And if she does not hear from me, she has been known to send out a posse. One day she even left school to check on me when I didn't show up at a meeting I had forgotten.

We sit together in church holding hands during prayer and often eat lunch together on Sunday--which is the lonliest day of the week for me otherwise (Bless those widows you see sitting alone in church and take them in). We attended the West Texas Fair and its parade for years, parking Sam's pickup so we could all sit together in folding chairs and watch. We played in New Braunfels several summers and ate our weight there in the downstairs kitchen at The Other Place. We celebrated birthdays, Christmas, and snow. Their girls treated Brandon as their brother and saw him through Sam's death, braces and girl friends.

They are my shadows and my dearest friends. Thank you Lord for them and bless them with long life to serve you.