Navigating Singleness with Faith and Self-Worth w/ Taylor Krause

If you could turn back time, what would you tell your single self? In this podcast, Taylor explores the Christian wisdom and advice she'd give to her younger, single self! From learning to trust God to taking more risks, we're diving into the lessons we've learned along the way and the things we wish we knew back then. In this podcast we discuss,

• Recognizing personal worth beyond romantic validation
• Importance of understanding God’s perception of us
• Validating the desire for relationships without obsession
• Encouraging self-reflection and personal growth
• Being honest about insecurities and social barriers
• Rethinking superficial standards in dating
• Tips for building community and respectful connections

Check out our community!: https://coffeeandbibletime.com/community/

If you are a Christian woman seeking to know God deeper, study Scriptures, pray with and for others, strengthen your faith, and support other in doing the same, this is the place for you! 

Chapters

• 0:04 Christian Singleness Advice for Young Women
• 10:32 Navigating Relationships With Christian Values

Transcript

Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. 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. We are so glad you have joined us.

Taylor Krause: 0:27

Hi everyone. It is so good to be with you. It's so good to talk to you and just connect. 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. Obviously, I am not my mother today, unless you guys think we have the same voice, then Well, hello. This is Taylor. I am the youngest one here a part of Coffee Revival Time mentor mama. My mom usually hosts this podcast, but today I'm taking over.

Taylor Krause: 1:02

I wanted to share with you guys just what I shared on our YouTube channel basically this past week. 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. 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. This is fresh, this is new and I hope that you guys enjoy it Without further ado. Here is the podcast.

Taylor Krause: 1:35

Welcome back to Coffee and Bible Time. My name is Taylor. If you're new here, welcome. 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. I'm like I could have just hammered this into my head. I would have saved myself a lot of heartache. So I'm excited to get into this.

Taylor Krause: 2:12

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. 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. So it does cost money to be a part of it. 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. 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. So yeah, if you're interested in that, I'll have it linked down below. 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.

Taylor Krause: 3:25

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. Comment down below where you're at if you want to share. I'm sure a lot of us can relate and just kind of, yeah, comfort each other. 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. 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. 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.

Taylor Krause: 4:41

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? And I feel it was just so in vain. 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. But when we're single, we're not being pursued. We feel less than because all these you know, quote unquote beautiful women are being pursued by attractive men. I really feel like the devil is making us focus on things that are just not important.

Taylor Krause: 5:34

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. 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. I was walking through eating disorder recovery, so I was gaining weight. 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. 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. This is all a problem. 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.

Taylor Krause: 6:47

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. 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? Am I attractive? Am I beautiful? Are they finding some worth in me? Even just like? The way that I would like dress myself in the morning was am I dressing attractive? Am I? You know, I was always thinking about what could guys think of me, especially even in conversations. How am I presenting myself? Do they think I'm smart? You know, am I funny enough? Yada, yada, yada.

Taylor Krause: 7:35

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. 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. 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? Very little, and a lot of them, I feel like, were kind of strangers. Looking back, I'm like why did I care about what these people think? I never talked to them. It was just a waste of my mental energy and mind reading like thinking you know what men are thinking. That's also futile. You don't know. You don't know and we probably don't want to know.

Taylor Krause: 8:30

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. I want to be thinking about you. Remind yourself, okay, I want to flip this switch. I want to be thinking about you, lord. I want to be thinking about what you think of me. I want to be thinking about my inward qualities and I want to improve myself. I want to be the best version of myself that I can be mentally, physically, spiritually. 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. 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.

Taylor Krause: 9:39

Okay, so my third piece of advice is this there's nothing wrong with wanting to be in a relationship. 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. I think that that is a beautiful desire. You see immediately in Genesis that God tells Adam it's not good for you to be alone and he creates a woman like. There's this dynamic, this chemistry between men and women that creates a beautiful, you know God, honoring God, reflective relationship. We're meant to live in community. It doesn't necessarily mean we have to have a relationship in order to reflect the image of God or to live in community. No, you can do that as you're single and I do feel like I did that as I was single.

Taylor Krause: 10:32

But all that to say, you don't need to like get down on yourself for wanting to be in a relationship. 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. 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. Like if you wanting to be in a relationship is affecting how you're living your everyday life in an unhealthy way. With all of these thoughts, you should probably see a counselor. I'm saying that to my younger self. Okay, my fourth tip Be willing to work on yourself and be honest about ways that you might be holding yourself back.

Taylor Krause: 11:38

Okay, I used to hide. 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. And in college, in high school, like rarely would I talk to boys because I was so insecure about showing people who I was. I was so afraid of rejection. 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. I was like always in my room or only with girls. 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? And the only reason why me and my fiance are together is because he reached out to me. 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. It's on our channel, um, he was recording it, and so that's kind of how we got connected. But I was not talking to boys people because I was afraid of them. 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. Ok, these are just some examples that I wrote down about ways that potentially we might be holding ourselves back. Ok, this could be true for you. This could be true for me. I've seen it in a lot of people. I've seen it in myself.

Taylor Krause: 13:26

Okay, one do we know how to like really have conversations with guys? In other words, are we dominating conversations? Are we not able to read the room? Are we being rude because we're so insecure that we're just rude to boys? 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. Like I said, I was always in my room. I was only ever with girls. I didn't have many, many solid relationships at my church with guys. 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. Three our conversations with guys don't go past surface level conversations. 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? Four not talking to guys because they aren't your type. I will get more into that on my last point. But writing men off because of their looks, I think is just surface level and we've all done it.

Taylor Krause: 14:45

Five not caring at all about our own physical appearance and hygiene. Guys notice when our hygiene isn't the best or when we aren't taking care of ourselves. 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. Five we need to be honest about having unrealistic standards for men to be perfect. 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. 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.

Taylor Krause: 15:47

And then my last point here is to stop focusing on looks and height. If this is your major first criteria, then we've got it all wrong. Okay, I don't know what it is about women. 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? Do they have abs? Do they have facial hair? You know all this stuff that is just like so meaningless and vain. 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. 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. It's like no, they're made in the image of God. 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. That is vain and we need to look inward as to why we're doing that. Alrighty. So those are my pieces of advice. I hope that they were helpful for you. I love you all so much.

Taylor Krause: 17:16

And, of course, please check out our community. We are so excited about this new season and going through Genesis with you all. 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. As don't forget, our community offers all of our courses on there for free. 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. So, with that being said, thank you so much for enjoying this podcast. Please rate our podcast as well if you like it, and we hope to see you next week. Bye.