Elaine, Me, Mom. May, 1984.Speeding at a Standstill
A few weeks ago, I left on a Thursday evening to meet my daughter. On my way out the door, I slipped a lipstick into my purse. She’d left the tube of Viva Glam in my car the last time I’d seen her and I had promised to return it the next time we met.
The last time I saw her–the day she left the lipstick? It was in July.
I don’t usually remember details like a forgotten lipstick for months. I left my salad tongs in my mother-in-law’s kitchen three years ago and have yet to remember, when we visit, to retrieve them. But I’m learning, since my girl grew up, married, and moved across an ocean, about a peculiar property of time:
When she goes away, the clock stops, resuming its tick-tocking only when she returns.
It’s a strange phenomenon. I’ve learned from it, though, that when time stands still, it feels like a little tidbit of forever has slipped into my here-and-now. Maybe a physicist could explain it, or at least give it some fancy name.
I just call it Lipstick Time.
As I write this, it has been fifteen days since we parted, fifteen days since she and I sat together and chatted while she nursed her baby girl, fifteen days since I watched Sawyer trot across the room to find another toy locomotive, fifteen days since I kissed baby Daphne’s impossibly smooth skin.
It feels like yesterday.
It feels like a lifetime ago.
I call it Lipstick Time.
It’s from God, this special longing. Love comes from Him.
So too must this unique, time-bending ache to be together with an absent beloved.
When I see her next, it will be as if we sipped coffee together just the day before. And it will be as if we’ve been parted for a long, long time.
We will hug, and tears will well, and the conversation will resume right where we left off, an eon ago.
Because we’re on Lipstick Time.
But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.
2 Peter 3:8 (NASB)
I’m linking with Jennifer Lee at Getting Down with Jesus for God-Bumps & God-Incidences. I hope you’ll stop by her remarkable place.
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