Blink

In the blink of an eye.

I never liked cliches and like them even less now.

Yesterday, in the blink of an eye, my world changed.

Two days earlier, I noticed on my caller ID that my mother had called. Since she didn’t leave a message, I figured I’d call her back on Saturday when I had more time. After all, we’d talked on Thanksgiving. At three o’clock, with half the day gone, she called me again.

For the first fifteen minutes, I rambled on about my job search, my husband’s hernia surgery and our hunt for health benefits. We haven’t seen each other in more than a year and a half and so our calls have taken on the nature of lengthy updates. Then it was her turn.

“I had a CAT scan on Thursday and they told me I have cancer.”

When she spoke, her voice shook with fear and tears. As one of three remaining siblings from a family of thirteen, all who died from cancer, she knows what her doctor’s recent pronouncement means. So do I.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?” I asked as the seriousness of her condition sunk in.

“I wanted to know if you got that job,” she said. “I know how much you need it.”

Yeah I did. But if I had gotten it, I wouldn’t have been able to say my next words. “I’m coming up.”

In the blink of an eye, my life has changed. My mother is my rock, my confident, my best friend. I live in Florida. She lives in Pennsylvania. 1200 miles away. We’ve driven it only once but because of a few other not-so-good blinks in the past two years, we will probably be driving it again. It’s not how I want to do life right now. But sometimes we don’t get choices.

Blink.

Sometimes we don’t get to fix those blinks. Sometimes we try to ignore them—hoping they’ll go away and not affect us. Sometimes we are the blink in another person’s life. But the fact remains—they happen.

For me it comes down to this: God promises only today. Seconds, minutes, hours. How many blinks is that? How am I going to make the best use of them?

Have there been any blinks in your life lately?