Latest / Coffee and Bible Time Podcast / Navigating Singleness with Faith and Self-Worth | Taylor Krause

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Navigating Singleness with Faith and Self-Worth | Taylor Krause · Coffee and Bible Time Podcast

• 1:01
  Ellen Krause: At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast.
• 1:03
  Ellen Krause: Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living.
• 1:07
  Ellen Krause: Each week we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk.
• 1:18
  Ellen Krause: We are so glad you have joined us.
• 1:23
  Taylor Krause: Hi everyone.
• 1:24
  Taylor Krause: It is so good to be with you.
• 1:26
  Taylor Krause: It's so good to talk to you and just connect.
• 1:29
  Taylor Krause: Obviously, if you guys are listening to this podcast, you are here to learn about what I would tell my younger single self if I could go back and give myself some pieces of advice.
• 1:41
  Taylor Krause: Obviously, I am not my mother today, unless you guys think we have the same voice, then Well, hello.
• 1:49
  Taylor Krause: This is Taylor.
• 1:50
  Taylor Krause: I am the youngest one here a part of Coffee Revival Time mentor mama.
• 1:56
  Taylor Krause: My mom usually hosts this podcast, but today I'm taking over.
• 1:59
  Taylor Krause: I wanted to share with you guys just what I shared on our YouTube channel basically this past week.
• 2:04
  Taylor Krause: If you guys keep up regularly, then you may have already seen this, but I basically created a video sharing with you guys everything I'm going to be sharing with you today.
• 2:13
  Taylor Krause: Only we are sharing it with a podcast because this kind of ended up being a little bit more of a popular video than I expected, so I definitely didn't want you guys to miss out.
• 2:24
  Taylor Krause: This is fresh, this is new and I hope that you guys enjoy it Without further ado.
• 2:28
  Taylor Krause: Here is the podcast.
• 2:31
  Taylor Krause: Welcome back to Coffee and Bible Time.
• 2:34
  Taylor Krause: My name is Taylor.
• 2:35
  Taylor Krause: If you're new here, welcome.
• 2:36
  Taylor Krause: We make videos every week to help you grow in your relationship with God and truly feel close to him, and a lot of that is through Bible study, reading God's word, and some of it is through some of these just lifestyle videos or chit chat videos, like today's gonna be, which is gonna be on singleness advice I would give to my younger single self, but it's also advice I would give to any of you guys, and I'm telling you a lot of these things.
• 3:00
  Taylor Krause: I'm like I could have just hammered this into my head.
• 3:04
  Taylor Krause: I would have saved myself a lot of heartache.
• 3:07
  Taylor Krause: So I'm excited to get into this.
• 3:08
  Taylor Krause: I have five tips that I'm going to share, but before I do that, I do want to let you guys know that we are going to be reading through Genesis, kind of doing a little bit more of an in-depth dive, and me and my sister and my mom we're going to be guiding you guys along through this, but it's going to be on our community page.
• 3:27
  Taylor Krause: So we're going to be focusing a lot of energy this new year into pouring into in-depth study and walking alongside of you guys, like in live bible study video formats.
• 3:38
  Taylor Krause: So it does cost money to be a part of it.
• 3:41
  Taylor Krause: But if you are wanting to kind of invest more into your relationship with God and studying your Bible, you know you have the three of us that are there to walk alongside of you and to really be with you, live through video as we walk through it.
• 3:56
  Taylor Krause: So think of it kind of as like a little bit of like a mentor type relationship, but also you're in community with other women who are wanting to do the same thing and invest in their relationship with God this new year.
• 4:06
  Taylor Krause: So yeah, if you're interested in that, I'll have it linked down below.
• 4:09
  Taylor Krause: You can learn more about it on our website and today's video is going to be kind of Christian advice to my younger single self and it's also just kind of going to be a chit chat type of video.
• 4:21
  Taylor Krause: I wrote down a lot of points in my journal here that I kind of just wanted to share and be real and honest, that going through singleness is hard, especially as a woman who is desiring to have a godly relationship and to find somebody who loves them for who you are and how you've been made in Christ.
• 4:42
  Taylor Krause: Comment down below where you're at if you want to share.
• 4:46
  Taylor Krause: I'm sure a lot of us can relate and just kind of, yeah, comfort each other.
• 4:50
  Taylor Krause: So the first piece of advice that I would give and if I could hammer this into my head when I was younger, I would is that you are not less than You're and you are not unattractive just because nobody's pursuing you.
• 5:07
  Taylor Krause: And I want to just like put this first and foremost, because for some reason, I feel like, especially as women, we just automatically go to like, oh, people aren't pursuing me.
• 5:21
  Taylor Krause: There must be something wrong with the way that I look, and that is, I really just feel so much of the enemy, like working through social media and just making us really focus on things that don't really matter.
• 5:37
  Taylor Krause: Like, and when I was in high school, my first two years of college, I feel like I was so down on myself for not being the right size or not being pretty enough, or like always thinking like, what can I do to make myself look more attractive?
• 5:51
  Taylor Krause: And I feel it was just so in vain.
• 5:53
  Taylor Krause: The fact that scripture tells us right off the bat that God looks at the heart, he's more interested in our heart, and that a woman who is of value and of dignity is somebody who is honorable, it's like all these inward qualities right, that's what matters to the lord.
• 6:11
  Taylor Krause: But when we're single, we're not being pursued.
• 6:15
  Taylor Krause: We feel less than because all these you know, quote unquote beautiful women are being pursued by attractive men.
• 6:21
  Taylor Krause: I really feel like the devil is making us focus on things that are just not important.
• 6:30
  Taylor Krause: Now that I have met my future husband he's my fiance right now he never made me feel like I was the wrong size or that I was unattractive and like.
• 6:45
  Taylor Krause: The ironic part is, when I was with him at the beginning of our relationship and throughout, I was probably the heaviest weight I've ever been in at my life.
• 6:54
  Taylor Krause: I was walking through eating disorder recovery, so I was gaining weight.
• 6:58
  Taylor Krause: I wasn't restricting food and it was such a healing thing for me to be with a man who affirmed me of my body, told me that he loved me for who I was, and he never made my weight something that I should feel ashamed of or concerned about.
• 7:17
  Taylor Krause: But I'm telling you, when you're single and you're struggling with not being pursued, our brains race to this place of well, I must not be attractive, I must be, you know, overweight.
• 7:29
  Taylor Krause: This is all a problem.
• 7:30
  Taylor Krause: There are men out there that are ready and willing to love you for who you are, and if it's not right in this moment, it does not mean that it won't ever happen.
• 7:43
  Taylor Krause: Okay, so the second piece of advice that I would give to my younger single self, and anybody who is single, is to become more interested in how God sees you than how men see you.
• 7:55
  Taylor Krause: And I think that this is so tricky because when you're single or at least how it was for me and you can comment down below, this is if you relate to this my thoughts were always preoccupied with what are these guys thinking of me?
• 8:08
  Taylor Krause: Am I attractive?
• 8:09
  Taylor Krause: Am I beautiful?
• 8:10
  Taylor Krause: Are they finding some worth in me?
• 8:13
  Taylor Krause: Even just like?
• 8:14
  Taylor Krause: The way that I would like dress myself in the morning was am I dressing attractive?
• 8:18
  Taylor Krause: Am I?
• 8:18
  Taylor Krause: You know, I was always thinking about what could guys think of me, especially even in conversations.
• 8:24
  Taylor Krause: How am I presenting myself?
• 8:26
  Taylor Krause: Do they think I'm smart?
• 8:27
  Taylor Krause: You know, am I funny enough?
• 8:29
  Taylor Krause: Yada, yada, yada.
• 8:32
  Taylor Krause: I say that because why was I so preoccupied with what I thought men were thinking of me and way less concerned about what God was thinking of me.
• 8:43
  Taylor Krause: And I'm telling you, when your mind is so focused on what people might be thinking of you, it is exhausting and it is so completely futile because you will never know.
• 8:55
  Taylor Krause: You will never know what men are thinking of you and it really doesn't matter I'm saying this to myself how many of these men are going to be in your life forever?
• 9:03
  Taylor Krause: Very little, and a lot of them, I feel like, were kind of strangers.
• 9:09
  Taylor Krause: Looking back, I'm like why did I care about what these people think?
• 9:11
  Taylor Krause: I never talked to them.
• 9:13
  Taylor Krause: It was just a waste of my mental energy and mind reading like thinking you know what men are thinking.
• 9:21
  Taylor Krause: That's also futile.
• 9:22
  Taylor Krause: You don't know.
• 9:23
  Taylor Krause: You don't know and we probably don't want to know.
• 9:27
  Taylor Krause: When you catch yourself thinking about, or caring over caring about, what guys might be thinking of you, remind yourself okay, I want to flip this switch.
• 9:38
  Taylor Krause: I want to be thinking about you.
• 9:40
  Taylor Krause: Remind yourself, okay, I want to flip this switch.
• 9:41
  Taylor Krause: I want to be thinking about you, lord.
• 9:42
  Taylor Krause: I want to be thinking about what you think of me.
• 9:44
  Taylor Krause: I want to be thinking about my inward qualities and I want to improve myself.
• 9:48
  Taylor Krause: I want to be the best version of myself that I can be mentally, physically, spiritually.
• 9:54
  Taylor Krause: Focus that energy on what you think people might be thinking of you, into how you can be the best that you can be for the Lord and, as hard as it is, being open to what God has for you in this season, whether it be him bringing you somebody or whether it not be that I feel like if I knew, looking back, that I was going to be single through our high school, I was going to be single my first two years of college, I wouldn't be thinking about men.
• 10:24
  Taylor Krause: I would be focusing all that energy into who God has made me to be and how much time would I have saved and how much mental energy and, you know, chasing after the wind would I be saving.
• 10:35
  Taylor Krause: Okay, so my third piece of advice is this there's nothing wrong with wanting to be in a relationship.
• 10:44
  Taylor Krause: Essentially, I would just want to let my younger self know, and you, any of you guys that are single there is nothing wrong with wanting to be in a relationship.
• 10:53
  Taylor Krause: I think that that is a beautiful desire.
• 10:56
  Taylor Krause: You see immediately in Genesis that God tells Adam it's not good for you to be alone and he creates a woman like.
• 11:03
  Taylor Krause: There's this dynamic, this chemistry between men and women that creates a beautiful, you know God, honoring God, reflective relationship.
• 11:13
  Taylor Krause: We're meant to live in community.
• 11:15
  Taylor Krause: It doesn't necessarily mean we have to have a relationship in order to reflect the image of God or to live in community.
• 11:23
  Taylor Krause: No, you can do that as you're single and I do feel like I did that as I was single.
• 11:28
  Taylor Krause: But all that to say, you don't need to like get down on yourself for wanting to be in a relationship.
• 11:34
  Taylor Krause: On the flip side, I think if you are obsessing over wanting to be in a relationship and we can just be honest about it right, because we've all been there, but you've got to be honest if you are obsessing about being in a relationship, that is not healthy either, because there's something that we're hoping in a relationship is going to fulfill that it's just not, it just can't and I wish that I could.
• 12:02
  Taylor Krause: You know, like tell my younger self like, yes, it's okay to want to be in a relationship, but you cannot be putting your hope and striving and everything into it.
• 12:11
  Taylor Krause: Like if you wanting to be in a relationship is affecting how you're living your everyday life in an unhealthy way.
• 12:18
  Taylor Krause: With all of these thoughts, you should probably see a counselor.
• 12:22
  Taylor Krause: I'm saying that to my younger self.
• 12:24
  Taylor Krause: Okay, my fourth tip Be willing to work on yourself and be honest about ways that you might be holding yourself back.
• 12:34
  Taylor Krause: Okay, I used to hide.
• 12:36
  Taylor Krause: I used to be so insecure about who I was like not only would I wear baggy clothing because I was so insecure about the way that my body looked, but I would hardly hardly talk to boys on campus.
• 12:49
  Taylor Krause: And in college, in high school, like rarely would I talk to boys because I was so insecure about showing people who I was.
• 12:58
  Taylor Krause: I was so afraid of rejection.
• 13:00
  Taylor Krause: Really, I wish I could have looked back and like been honest about myself, about ways I was holding myself back potentially from finding a future partner because I was never getting out.
• 13:14
  Taylor Krause: I was like always in my room or only with girls.
• 13:18
  Taylor Krause: Like, looking back, I'm like how would I think that I was going to find somebody when I was literally never talking to boys?
• 13:25
  Taylor Krause: And the only reason why me and my fiance are together is because he reached out to me.
• 13:32
  Taylor Krause: I really didn't even know him that well, um, but he did work with me on a video that I did on campus for my song anxious devotion.
• 13:43
  Taylor Krause: It's on our channel, um, he was recording it, and so that's kind of how we got connected.
• 13:48
  Taylor Krause: But I was not talking to boys people because I was afraid of them.
• 13:53
  Taylor Krause: So, in ways that I needed to be willing to work on myself would have been working on my confidence, working on getting out there, working on talking to boys and thinking of them as friends and not all as potential future somebodies.
• 14:10
  Taylor Krause: Ok, these are just some examples that I wrote down about ways that potentially we might be holding ourselves back.
• 14:16
  Taylor Krause: Ok, this could be true for you.
• 14:19
  Taylor Krause: This could be true for me.
• 14:20
  Taylor Krause: I've seen it in a lot of people.
• 14:21
  Taylor Krause: I've seen it in myself.
• 14:22
  Taylor Krause: Okay, one do we know how to like really have conversations with guys?
• 14:27
  Taylor Krause: In other words, are we dominating conversations?
• 14:30
  Taylor Krause: Are we not able to read the room?
• 14:33
  Taylor Krause: Are we being rude because we're so insecure that we're just rude to boys?
• 14:37
  Taylor Krause: I had that problem where I was just like somehow so insecure myself that I was just rude not getting out where Christian guys are.
• 14:47
  Taylor Krause: Like I said, I was always in my room.
• 14:49
  Taylor Krause: I was only ever with girls.
• 14:52
  Taylor Krause: I didn't have many, many solid relationships at my church with guys.
• 14:58
  Taylor Krause: And all this to say like we're not trying to scheme over here to find somebody, but it's like maybe we need to have some common sense that if we're never getting out, we're never being around guys, our chances are going to fall.
• 15:14
  Taylor Krause: Three our conversations with guys don't go past surface level conversations.
• 15:18
  Taylor Krause: If we're always joking, we're always keeping things at the surface, like how are we expecting people to really get to know us for who we are?
• 15:25
  Taylor Krause: Four not talking to guys because they aren't your type.
• 15:28
  Taylor Krause: I will get more into that on my last point.
• 15:32
  Taylor Krause: But writing men off because of their looks, I think is just surface level and we've all done it.
• 15:41
  Taylor Krause: Five not caring at all about our own physical appearance and hygiene.
• 15:47
  Taylor Krause: Guys notice when our hygiene isn't the best or when we aren't taking care of ourselves.
• 15:53
  Taylor Krause: If it's obvious to ourselves that we're not really taking care of ourselves and it's probably going to be obvious to other people.
• 16:00
  Taylor Krause: Five we need to be honest about having unrealistic standards for men to be perfect.
• 16:07
  Taylor Krause: If we're waiting for a guy that's going to be perfect and I know we all say we're not waiting for that but when we see the first sign of a guy being human, we run because we're afraid of being hurt or whatever or it triggers something.
• 16:26
  Taylor Krause: Just know that no man is going to be perfect and so when they show you the first signs of them being human, maybe we shouldn't run, maybe we should stick around and see what it looks like to love them like Christ does, a little bit longer.
• 16:43
  Taylor Krause: And then my last point here is to stop focusing on looks and height.
• 16:49
  Taylor Krause: If this is your major first criteria, then we've got it all wrong.
• 16:56
  Taylor Krause: Okay, I don't know what it is about women.
• 16:59
  Taylor Krause: We do have a double standard where we're like we don't want men to just like us because of our looks, but that our first criteria when looking for a guy is are they six feet tall?
• 17:10
  Taylor Krause: Do they have abs?
• 17:12
  Taylor Krause: Do they have facial hair?
• 17:14
  Taylor Krause: You know all this stuff that is just like so meaningless and vain.
• 17:24
  Taylor Krause: But if that is not the most important thing to the Lord our looks then it should not be the most important thing for us in finding a partner.
• 17:33
  Taylor Krause: It should be who they are on the inside and to just try to start thinking of men as made in the image of God, and I think that that'll just kind of help us to stop like thinking of them as options in a conveyor belt of potential future husbands.
• 17:51
  Taylor Krause: It's like no, they're made in the image of God.
• 17:53
  Taylor Krause: There is beauty in each and every one of them and we shouldn't just write somebody off because they aren't blonde or they aren't XYZ.
• 18:02
  Taylor Krause: That is vain and we need to look inward as to why we're doing that.
• 18:05
  Taylor Krause: Alrighty.
• 18:09
  Taylor Krause: So those are my pieces of advice.
• 18:10
  Taylor Krause: I hope that they were helpful for you.
• 18:11
  Taylor Krause: I love you all so much.
• 18:12
  Taylor Krause: And, of course, please check out our community.
• 18:15
  Taylor Krause: We are so excited about this new season and going through Genesis with you all.
• 18:19
  Taylor Krause: If you've been wanting to study through Genesis, take this as an opportunity to really join us as we teach you guys how to study the Bible from the beginning as well.
• 18:31
  Taylor Krause: As don't forget, our community offers all of our courses on there for free.
• 18:35
  Taylor Krause: So if you've been wanting to invest in your education, for learning how to study the Bible for yourself, please take a look at our website and join us, and you can even just do it for a month and see how it feels.
• 18:47
  Taylor Krause: So, with that being said, thank you so much for enjoying this podcast.
• 18:52
  Taylor Krause: Please rate our podcast as well if you like it, and we hope to see you next week.
• 18:59
  Taylor Krause: Bye.