The Phone Call After the Diagnosis

When Marcus Rivera got the call from his oncologist in March 2023, the first thing he did was phone his mother. Not because she could fix anything — she was eighty-one and living in a small apartment in San Antonio — but because crisis has a way of sending us back to the people we've neglected.

Marcus hadn't called her in four months. He'd been busy, he told himself. Work at the distribution center, his kids' soccer schedules, the new truck payment. But sitting in his parked car outside the clinic, hands shaking, he dialed her number from memory. She picked up on the second ring, as if she'd been waiting.

She didn't scold him for the silence. She just said, "Tell me everything, mijo."

That's the pattern the psalmist describes in Psalm 78 — a cycle as old as humanity itself. When God slew them, then they sought Him. They remembered that the Most High was their rock. But their hearts were not steadfast. Their words were flattery on their lips. They turned to the Almighty only when the diagnosis came, when the bottom dropped out, when the bill collectors called.