How do I persist values in lookup field?

How do I persist values in lookup field?

I have a timesheet application, where the field "Customer name" is a lookup in Customer table. The customer table will occasionally be wiped and new valus inserted. Unfortunately, this deletes the lookup values in the Timesheet table.

How do I keep the lookup values? 

It is OK that the lookup values is not valid for old records, but new entrys should only use current rows in customer table.