For centuries it has been said that “the eyes are the windows of the soul” so I am not going to attack that belief for all the golf balls in your golf bag.

And over the years volumes have been written about what we can learn about a person from their walk or their talk. Or their handwriting or their handshake. Or the way they say hello or wave goodbye.

But have you ever stopped to think about what our shoulders say about us?

I don’t simply mean that all drooping shoulders mean that a heart is drooping as well. Sometimes shoulders droop because they have lifted too many bales of hay on a hot summer day.

But let’s stop for a minute and think about how our shoulders have the ability to tell on us when we didn’t even know that they had a voice.

There may be more, but three types of shoulders popped into my mind as I was massaging my left shoulder which has been “killin’ me” for several weeks now.

One type of shoulder that tells on us is The Cold Shoulder.

When I speak of the Cold Shoulder, I am not referring to how your shoulder feels when you trot out coatless on a wintry afternoon to get your mail.

We can play dumb and act like we don’t know what’s going on, but when we get or give the Cold Shoulder we know exactly what we are doing and we also know exactly why we are doing it. 

The Cold Shoulder causes people to vanish….you know…..just disappear. It says, “I don’t care if you are 7′2″ tall and you weigh 350 pounds, I don’t see you and you don’t even exist in my world because I don’t want to talk to you right now and the shoulder becomes known as….The Cold Shoulder.

I don’t know exactly how you are wired, but the Cold Shoulder is probably the most difficult activity that I have ever tried to participate in.

I dislike the Cold Shoulder because I like to talk/fight stuff out. And it’s kinda’ hard for a talker to pout so save your money and don’t buy me a ticket for that show. Not to mention that if I pout and no one asks me what’s eating at me for three or four days then I am in a real fix and it’s just not worth the risk.

A second type of shoulder that tells on us is The Chipped Shoulder.

The Chipped Shoulder tells an observant world that something bad happened or something good didn’t and the disappointed soul is pretty ticked off about it.

And because of what happened in ‘96 or didn’t happen in ‘98 hasn’t been effectively worked through, we often take our frustration out on innocent people and we find ourselves walking through life looking for someone to blame or someone to fight.

But a third type of shoulder are the kind of shoulders that I want to have holding my head up.

A third type of shoulder that tells on us are The Broad Shoulders.

The Broad Shoulders are the shoulders that speak of strength. We can be leaned upon and trusted to effectively carry the load when things get rough and tough.

The Broad Shoulders I want to have aren’t simply shoulders created by countless hours spent in the gym lifting barbells.

The shoulders I want have been developed through the exercises of faith found only through testing.

Testing that has an amazing ability to thaw the shoulders and polish out the chips and nicks. And leave in their places shoulders strong enough for someone to lean on and still have enough strength to carry whatever load needs carried.