Signs

My cousin Jen did a post about this link:

http://bravegirlsclub.com/blog/?p=1411

the other day, and I (like her) have thought about it a lot. I remember in one of my classes in high school, our teacher had us each wear a sign around our neck that read, "IALAC." It stood for "I Am Loving And Caring." Cheesy, I know, but she told us that each of us is a person who wants to love and care, and who wants to be loved and cared for by someone else. Our parents, our friends at school, people we meet. But sometimes people are careless with other people's feelings and they end up damaging people's IALAC sign. She asked us to wear the sign at school for one day. Whenever we got our feelings hurt by someone else, we were supposed to rip a little piece off the sign. At the end of the day we checked in with our teacher. Some of the student's signs were still intact (they said they let nothing bother them). Others had little rips. Others were crumpled and only had one piece dangling from the string. Others only had the string left hanging around their neck. It was a visual reminder of how we feel people treat us, and how we treat others.

I think we all just want people to like us and treat us kindly, in everyday life and especially when we are hurting inside. Sometimes people can make us feel very defensive, and other times people can be our "soft place." The blog post I mentioned above is a good reminder of how we treat each other - to remember that everyone is wearing some kind of "sign," and we need to look for it and see them and treat them like our Heavenly Father would.