"After a few moments," Randy wrote, "I travel in my mind to a place in the north Georgia mountains where I used to go on camping trips. There I have built an open structure, a gazebo, where I go to talk with Jesus. Normally, I go in and call for Jesus and he comes. We visit, and usually I give him my prayers of thanksgiving and intercessions."

Late one summer Randy got the news that his cancer was back. He was in his own words, "an emotional wreck." At that time Randy prayed. In his mind he was again in the mountains waiting for Jesus to come to the door of the gazebo. "At that moment a completely unthought-of event happened that shook me to tears," Randy wrote. He saw himself as a five-year-old boy. "I became like a camera recording the event," was the way he described the experience. In the person of this boy he ran up to Jesus and hugged him. He pictured Jesus picking him up and carrying him to a seat and holding him in his arms. "He hugged me," Randy wrote. "I didn't say anything... He knew I was frightened. There were no answers and the future seemed so dim. As he hugged me he said, 'Trust me, Trust me.'"

"[Jesus] held me for a long time that night," Randy wrote, "until he knew I understood what he meant." Randy found strength from this experience. "We must trust Jesus as a child trusts--totally!" he wrote.

Then Randy concluded his letter with these words, "Because of this, whatever turns out to be the ultimate result of this disease, it's not the burden it was before. [Jesus] made no promise, nor did he reveal the future, but he had provided the format for living out the rest of my life with just two words... Trust me."

Ron Newhouse