We are in a series where we are talking about what to do with your singleness.
Like preparing for marriage and all the things.
I know some of you guys are like, “Are you dating somebody?”
No.
At the time of this recording, I am not dating someone.
But it’s just something that has been on my heart that I’ve wanted to talk about.
In this article, we’re talking about preparing for marriage, but specifically today’s topic is what to do with your singleness.
So when we think about going from single to marry, a lot of times we, me included, we’re trying to speed up that season.
We’re trying to speed up that process.
Like getting on all the dating apps, me included, and trying to speed up that process.
But not actually taking stock in what is happening right now?
What is it that I could be doing right now in this season?
What is it that God is trying to teach me?
What is happening in this season?
Me and my best friend, we’ve been talking about this a lot because I’ve been going through a lot of the different health challenges and different things have been going on, and I’ve just really been talking to her about like, “Oh, you know what, like it would be great to heal from what I’m dealing with before I get married because it’s just certain things or whatever, right?”
This is kind of what I’m doing in my single season.
But specifically today, I wanted to tell you about five of the things that I feel like you could be doing while you were single.
And a lot of these things are what I’m in the process.
I can’t say that I am going hard after all right now, but I am trying.
One of the things that you wanna do in your single season is you wanna be going after your God-given purpose.
That’s a given right now.
I feel like a lot of times we don’t actually know what that is.
We are doing whatever it is that we are doing.
We go to whatever church we go to, we may be doing whatever.
I don’t really see it in a choir, or you’re serving at children’s church or women’s ministry, or men’s ministry, whatever.
Which are all amazing.
But I also think it’s really important to really sit with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit and let them help identify what you are uniquely called to do.
Now, it’s been a journey for me to know and understand what that is for me.
But when I think about on a regular basis, what brings me joy, what brings other people joy, and in what ways do I really impact people the most, speaking.
I cannot say I’ve always loved to speak.
I can’t say I’ve always loved the sound of my voice or I can’t say that I always feel like I have something to say.
But when I say things, I oftentimes will have people come to me and say, you’re just so anointed and so gifted to speak.
I’m always like, “Really?”
I’m on stage and I’ve done a talk about business or whatever, and then people come to me and say these things.
And then when I think about it, sometimes when I’m teaching or preaching from a Christian ministry standpoint, I see the impact that I’m able to have on people, especially when I’m like surrendered to God and not in my flesh, how it becomes a blessing to people.
And so I’ve identified that.
I have been on this journey of trying to be like, “Okay, this is my God-given gifting, I’ve gotta cultivate this, I’ve gotta develop this, I’ve gotta get better at this and I’ve gotta get mentoring around this. So I can continue doing what it is that God has called me to do.”
While I’m in my single season or just in general, because even when he does come along, I still have the calling on my life without him.
There’ll be things that God wants us to do together.
But before I ever met him or ever knew him, I always had a calling on my life.
And so it’s important for me to be going after my God-given purpose.
The second thing you could be doing in your single season is actually dating to see what you’re looking for.
I’m not talking about you going on dates with a million guys and you always swiping right, swiping left, or sleeping with people.
I’m not saying any of that stuff, but what I am saying is this, a lot of times we as women, we are thinking about Prince Charming.
He’s gonna rescue me. All of my problems are gonna be solved when he comes along.
That ain’t true because he’s a person. He’s a human.
And she is human too. If you’re a man.
These are humans. These are people with awesomeness and then not so awesomeness.
These are people that come with baggage.
These are people that come with their own expectations, their own complexities, their own relationship with the Lord.
They have their own path.
They all come with stuff and we don’t really know what it is that we’re looking for that or when it shows.
I remember this one time I was at a party, it was a bunch of Christian people at this party.
And like I was meeting people, hugging people saying, “Hey, what’s up? What’s up, what’s up?”
And then I met this guy and I hugged him and I was just like, “Woo. Wow. What was that?”
So I have this thing where I can sense things and I’m learning how to cultivate that. And when I hugged him, I was just like, wow. What is that?
And so I went back to him and said, “Who are you again?”
He told me his name.
And I was just like, “Dude, you got quite the father’s heart on you.”
I could feel the love of God coming off of this man.
It was so strong. I was in awe of him and just what he carried.
And I remember going back home that night and just writing in my journal, “I want something like that.”
Doesn’t mean it’s him.
But it was just that feeling of safety I had never ever felt that on a man before in my life, and I felt it on that man.
I was like, “Check, please!”
I know some y’all like, what happened with that guy?
He had pluses and minuses and when I asked God about him, God was just like, “No, he’s not the one.”
But that thing you felt on him is something you need to add to your list.
Then there was a man that I met and he was, everybody loves him. He’s so giving and all.
And I was like, “I want that.”
So it’s just these things about men that I just would not realize that exists in a man until I met a man like that.
I recently met a man, I’m not dating him, and he is a man that says “I don’t wanna kiss till I get to the altar because I don’t wanna have sex until getting married.”
“I’ve already been there, been there, done that. I’m trying to keep myself and get to the altar.”
I was like, “Yes, please!”
Because that’s what I’ve been telling God. I wanna do it. I wanna kiss, I want all that. But if this dude kisses me, it’s over. Like it’s Finito.
But I heard him say that, I was like, “They do exist.”
Handsome, black, all that.
He doesn’t have to be black. But this guy was handsome, black, and successful.
I was like, “They do exist.” Wrote that down.
So you can actually be dating and connecting with men and people to see what it is you actually are looking for.
The third thing you could be doing while you’re single is starting a new hobby.
I know it sounds crazy, but just think about it.
You work all day and then come home and sit in front of a TV.
That’s what a lot of us do. That’s what I’m doing right now.
But what we actually could be doing is starting a new hobby, finding something fun to do with ourselves or with other people.
So last year I started swimming lessons again at the pool, at my apartment complex.
And while it was scary and it can be scary, it has become freeing because now when I look at the water, I’m not as scared as I was a year ago.
Because I went on vacation to Mexico for like, three weeks and I didn’t get in the water cuz I was so afraid.
I mean it is crazy, but I’m just telling you, I went on vacation, didn’t get in the water. Crazy.
I don’t wanna be that way.
I lived at the beach basically here in San Diego and I want to go and do these things and when I go on vacation, I wanna get in the water.
Everybody said they’re gonna go snorkeling. I wanna go snorkeling, I wanna go swim with the fishes.
I wanna do all these things that people do.
And so in order to do that, I had to learn how to swim and so we could start a new hobby.
So I’m actually getting ready to move from where I live in Northern San Diego to the inner city and its apartment complex, it actually has a bowling alley.
You’re like, “This is bougie.”
This apartment complex costs a lot less than where I live right now.
I’m kind of downgrading in a beautiful way and I’m excited about it.
And they got a bowling alley. One of the things I could do is really learn how to bowl well.
I think they also have a foosball table. I think they have a pool table.
These are some of the things that I can start doing just to have a fun hobby.
Doesn’t mean I’m gonna do them every day or every week, but just a new hobby.
The fourth thing you can do is you can work on some goals.
I’m not saying that these goals have to be to lose weight.
You can if you want to, one of my goals was to learn how to do my makeup, and then my second goal was to learn how to style my clothing.
And so I had been on this journey. I took two classes by a makeup artist teaching me the basics of getting started with my makeup.
Then I started playing around with clothing, buying lots of pieces of clothing.
And then people I know started buying little things and I’ve been slowly learning how to put all these different pieces together.
While it can be scary at times, it could also be really fun.
Last week I spoke in LA at a conference and I was trying to decide what I was gonna wear on stage.
And I was like, “Here is this shirt that I had bought a while ago. I wanna wear this shirt.”
Because right now I have to have surgery on my stomach. I have something which you call ’em things fibroid, in my uterus.
So it makes my stomach sit out really far, like eight-months-pregnant far.
And so I was like, “Okay, I wanna hide that a little bit. I’m gonna wear that shirt.” And I said, “What bottoms am I gonna wear?”
So I ended up bringing a bunch of bottoms and I’m just like, “Okay, I think I’m gonna wear this shirt with this skirt, with these shoes or whatever.” And I chose the outfit.
And when I got on stage, I had all these people just complimenting my outfit.
When I posted on social media, everybody was complimenting my outfit.
But the only reason why I could do that outfit was because I decided that I want that.
One of my goals was gonna be, to learn how to style my own clothing so that way I didn’t have to hire a fashion stylist or whatever, but that I could learn how to do that myself.
And for me, it is becoming so fun when I put things together for myself and then I go out and I meet people and they’re just like, “Oh, I love your outfit.” And in my mind, I’m like, “Yes!!”
But it tells me that I did good.
And so now the last thing you can do while you’re single is you can work on yourself.
I’m always talking about working on yourself.
Because nobody’s perfect.
We all come into life with whatever.
I’ve been going through so much intensive therapy and asking myself, “Why do I think this? Why do I feel this?”
The more that I have been in therapy, all this old trauma has started coming up from my childhood, because when I went to therapy after divorce, my therapist was like, “Oh, you don’t remember your childhood at all? Like, were you molested? No. Were you this? No.”
She was just like, “There was something about your, your childhood that was traumatized and that caused you to black out your childhood.”
And so I kept trying to remember my childhood and as I continued just going through things like intensive therapy, deliverance and EMDR therapy, I started to pick up the pieces of my childhood.
And again, I wasn’t molested or anything like that, but my childhood was very chaotic and very traumatizing.
As I am becoming more aware of that. I am also becoming more aware of why I think the way that I think, why I get triggered, the way that I get triggered. Why do I get so anxious?
I’m becoming way more aware.
I don’t really like what I’m now becoming aware of.
But I’m really glad that I’m aware of it because the more I am aware of it, the more I can learn, the more that I can heal and I can grow and then get and mature in the ways that I haven’t been able to until all of this stuff really came about.
And I know that sounds really scary.
A lot of us, we don’t really wanna dig back into those deep, dark, nasty places.
But if we don’t do it, we find ourselves stuck in these old ways and we can’t figure out why we’re there.
And so while you’re single, you could be working on these things.
That’s like me, I don’t like all the stuff that I’m dealing with.
I don’t like all the stuff that I have to grow from and heal from right now.
But I am glad that I’m single because these are certain things that I don’t have to bring to the relationship.
Like with what’s happening in my uterus, my doctor was like, “Well, if you were engaging in sexual activity, this would actually be really painful for you and you probably wouldn’t do it.”
And so I said, “Oh, So, because I get to have this surgery before I get married, I’m not gonna have to deprive my spouse of intimacy in that type of way because the surgery will be done.”
So if I was with somebody now and I was married, we wouldn’t be able to engage in sexual activity because of what’s going on in my body right now.
It would be extremely painful for me to be able to do that.
But I get to have surgery, heal, and then meet someone whenever God says.
But this is me choosing to work on myself.
I know this was like a big full disclosure, but the whole point of me sharing this is because the same thing I’m teaching and I’m preaching is what I’m doing in my own life.
I’m not telling you anything that I’m not doing. I’m not saying, “Oh, I’ve done it,”
I’m on the journey too.
If you think that people that you know are single and that you want them to enjoy their singleness, share this article with them.
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