The word “form” is one of those words I search for and find nearly every day as I write. It’s a typo. I type f-o-r-m instead of f-r-o-m. After 30 years of nursing, my fingers have muscle memory from typing the word “form” hundreds of times more than the word “from.”
It’s one of those subtle mistakes that my eyes want to skip over. My brain transposes the letters R and O. I recoil a bit each time I see that particular typo. The word “form” bugs me. It creates an extra step as I self-edit my writing. It’s annoying! But the word prompt for last week was “form,” in the context of transFORMation, the larger concept—the acronym.
Completing forms was part of every one of my nursing jobs, but the forms multiplied once I became a clinical research coordinator—forms to complete while interviewing patients, forms reporting patient symptoms and problems, forms to complete even for the patients who were doing spectacularly. Forms, especially the electronic ones, were often not adequate for communicating a complex patient problem.
My job required creating forms as legal documents, including a form to track what I’d done with all the forms. Blank lines! Oh, how I love the freedom of a blank line. Oh, how I dreaded reducing what had been written on a blank line to checkboxes and numbers.
In the same way many readers prefer holding an actual book over words on a screen, I preferred a patient chart, held together with those long, and quite effective paper-binding clips. The thickness of a patient’s chart indicated the complexity of a medical history. I could adjust my schedule to accommodate the amount of data inside. Opening an electronic medical file was often surprising, for the sheer volume, and often for what was missing.
Many nurses battled that transition form paper to electronic charts, even the young ones. It transformed our methods and our order of doing things. We were slow to trust it was for the patients’ good. We knew it was not a perfect system. With the shift from ink pen to the keyboard, the number of forms multiplied at least tenfold.
It was early last week when I went for my annual physical. While the doctor had one form open on the screen, I asked him how much weight I’d lost over the past year. (I’ve been trying!) It frustrated him (and me) that he had to leave one form (the lab form) to give me an answer. Back in the day, he would have used one finger as a bookmark, flipped the tab labeled “Vital Signs,” then quickly given me an answer before returning to the divider marked “Lab Results.”
Forms!
Instead of staring a hole through my doctor, I stared at a bulletin board and waited for his answer. There, I read a notice. It said, “Please notify the nurse, prior to seeing your healthcare provider, if you have a form that needs to be completed or signed. There will be a $16 charge to complete any form without a corresponding office visit.”
Forms! Forms! And more forms! Where do all these forms come form? And what does all this talk of forms have to do with last week’s word prompt? I’m getting to it.
Without looking to Oxford or Merriam or Webster, I can tell you that to create a form is to create boundaries, and boundaries are great … depending on the creator. What matters is knowing where exactly those boundaries are needed and having the ability to place them and shape them.
Example: I got an F on my first 7th grade art project. Unlike my teacher’s declaration, yes, I could identify a rabbit in my back yard or in a book. I could pick the shape of a rabbit in a lineup of jumping animals. But the assignment was to form one from clay. And yes, I could see how some of my classmates were forming their clay, and how their ability to pull an image from their brain with their fingers was far greater than mine. Just one more reason for me to recoil at the word.
TransFORMation? Is that even possible for people like me? There are people like me, right? People who struggle to check the right boxes and write only in the allotted spaces. People for whom the answer does not appear on the form in front of them. People who appreciate the narrative more than simple numbers and empty checkboxes. People who get frustrated by checking boxes with no option to explain. People who squeeze to stay inside boundaries, or stretch to fill otherwise empty space … boundaries that, by the way, seem to apply to someone else’s more perfect specifications.
Psalm 139: 14-16 (CSB) says: “I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. My bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret, when I was formed in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me when I was formless; all my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.”
That means there’s hope for people like me. We were formed on purpose and meant to please our creator. He set our boundaries, created our shape (our form) in such a way as to make us remarkable and wonderful. He has our tomorrows planned! He has fit us with an assignment in mind. That too is according to His meticulous and unique specifications.
So, why should I recoil at the thought of the word “form?”
Many of my seasoned coworkers chose to retire rather than learn and adapt to the digital world. A single mom, I needed the paycheck. Plus, it wasn’t bad at all—once the shock wore off. For a while though, it was double the work to document a patient’s progress and double the forms. Administrators didn’t trust the system either, so we were required to fill out both paper and digital forms. It was slow-going, and the world of clinical research was slower than most other specialties.
I loved my job and could have worked as a nurse for much longer than I did. But I wanted to be a writer. Blank lines called to me. Making the change was not easy … altering my schedule, overhauling my budget. I missed walking the hospital halls and seeing patients in the office and being an advocate. I still loved being a nurse for all the reasons I had wanted to be a nurse in the first place. The noteworthy difference? I no longer needed to manage all those forms!
And that’s when I realized that fingers have such good memory. They were formed that way. A friend of mine fell recently and broke her right arm. Like most of us, she’s right-handed. She can almost hear her right hand scoffing at her left, saying, “It’s so easy. You simply comb her hair and brush her teeth this way.” But her left hand has no such memory. Our left hands may be a mirror images of our right, but unless we are gifted and ambidextrous, they were formed for different tasks.
My friend does not need instruction to teach her left hand to perform the tasks her right hand has been doing with ease all these years. She’s practicing. She’s creating muscle memory. She’s doing therapy. Her arm is healing, but she’s struggling. She’s having to make accommodations, and settle for less, because muscle memory, with few exceptions, is a slow process. My friend’s right hand still remembers how to pick up a skillet and fry a hamburger. She doesn’t need to give it instructions. Her arm and hand have great muscle memory. But she does need to restrain her arm and wear a sling. If she doesn’t, her hand will grab that skillet and it will hurt. Without the sling, she could re-injure her arm. Muscle memory is a powerful thing.
Like my tasks as a nurse still have me tapping letters in a particular order, my eyes automatically examine, my ears love a story of healing or restoration, and my feet want to run toward a disaster and not from it. I’ve been formed, and my muscles have memory.
The only instruction we’d been given in the 7th grade about working with clay was a reminder that we’d only be given so much clay and a warning that it would harden more every day. I might have been able to do something with the project, but I kept putting it off. Discouragement set in. No matter what, that blob of gray clay appeared to be someone else’s discard. Dried up and hardened more every day. And then it was too late.
Life has a way of transforming us. Passively. Negatively. Like that lump of clay, we fiddle with things—for a while. We ask for help too late or we don’t ask at all. I should mention here that the art teacher was aloof and seemingly unapproachable. He was harsh and treated questions as interruptions. He praised students with natural talents and made a point to mock and shame the work of others. I froze. I gave in to defeat. An F was better than his humiliation.
Oh my! How often do I avoid the Lord’s intent to transform me? I am His clay. He presses and tugs and urges. He’s molding me, still forming me, and I don’t always like it. His hands are skillful, even tender. He cares for me and treats my outcome as vitally important, but I make like the transformation is gonna hurt too much. I resist. I freeze. I expect humiliation when it’s merely humbling.
The word still bugs me. Who knows? Perhaps I could have trained my fingers by now. Perhaps I still could? Type the letters f-r-o-m 100 times? Type it fast, 1000 times?
I know now that I should have practiced—disciplined my fingers, but those little typos can be searched, found and fixed. Years ago, I should have disciplined my thoughts and reactions to people like my 7th grade art teacher. It seems that I’ve let people form how I think and feel about myself when Jesus had a better plan. He formed me before my parents conceived me. He had planned how my life should take shape. But I’ve allowed people and circumstances to take and re-form the remarkable and wonderful life that would have been. I think sometimes that my life is a mess, but where would I be except that God is still forming me, shaping me.
Now, some would anticipate that I do what I did in Jr. High, procrastinate and then fail. They’d call it fate. Que sera, sera. Whatever will be will be. It’s tempting. I’ve considered it. But I know that God is not finished forming me. He didn’t create me and then click on some “Auto Shaping” app.
I’ve got two questions for you: Why would a Christian be so passive and allow just any flawed sinner to press and poke and squeeze, and essentially re-form them? And why would a Christian be fearful and vehemently resist the shape that our Perfect Creator and Savior calls to?
Paul writes to the church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 6:3-10): “We are not giving anyone an occasion for offense, so that the ministry will not be blamed.Instead, as God’s ministers, we commend ourselves in everything: by great endurance, by afflictions, by hardships, by difficulties.by beatings, by imprisonments, by riots, by labors, by sleepless nights, by times of hunger, by purity, by knowledge, by patience, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by sincere love, by the word of truth, by the power of God; through weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left, through glory and dishonor, through slander and good report; regarded as deceivers, yet true; as unknown, yet recognized; as dying, yet see—we live; as being disciplined, yet not killed; as grieving, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet enriching many; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
Wow! Paul wrote, “… we live as being disciplined, yet not killed …”
Uh oh! Are we still living a falsehood, bending over for spankings from people whose words have hurt is in the past?” Have we handed ourselves over to their re-forming? They’ve moved on, but we’ve placed their hand on some phantom “Auto Reshape” switch. I’ve let a few mean and cruel words shape my thoughts, behaviors and future. You too? Even as I write this, I’m asking for God to be my disciplinarian, realizing that some of my own wrong thoughts and deeds cannot be found and fixed with a few taps on a keyboard. A typo? Really? That’s what bugs me?
My friend won’t pick up a heavy skillet with her right hand until her humerus (not humorous) bone it healed. Muscle memory works quickly sometimes. I’m asking God to re-train me. I’m asking Him to erase some of my muscle memory and put my muscles to work creating new ones.
1 Corinthians 3:9: “For we are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field, God’s building.”
Paul isn’t only speaking of himself and the apostles who were being persecuted with him. He was looking for neither sympathy nor praise. This was a challenge to the church in Corinth, and divinely preserved for us. Coworkers. Together with God.
I did the word search before posting this. You should find at least two typos. You’ll see the word form when it should be from. I let the typos stay uncorrected, on purpose. That’s me testing you. If you caught it, I’m guessing you might have recoiled … same as me. If you missed it, bless your heart. Either way, each of us was made to be remarkable and wonderful.
Each of us could relax, not be so afraid for God to do a little poking and pressing. I can almost see His fingers. I can almost hear Him saying—This is good. This is very good.
