{"id":62,"date":"2012-06-28T02:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T02:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=62"},"modified":"2015-03-25T15:12:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T15:12:39","slug":"ordinary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=62","title":{"rendered":"Ordinary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am not super woman.&nbsp; I am an ordinary woman who just happened to have five children in a very short period of time.&nbsp; This feat was made possible by having four babies&nbsp;at once.&nbsp;(My husband and I believe in efficiency&#8230;)&nbsp; I am amazed at the reactions I get when people find out about our family.&nbsp; I hear things like, &#8216;you must be a saint&#8217; or &#8216;God knew who to give them to&#8217; or &#8216;you must be mother of the year&#8217;.&nbsp;&nbsp; It makes me smile and think, if only you realy knew me.&nbsp; God did not choose me to have these children because I possess some great mothering gene.&nbsp; He did not choose me because I had such great patience or capacity to love.&nbsp; He chose me because He is God and He gets to decide such things.&nbsp; His choosing had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with Him.<\/p>\n<p>So often when God calls us to something&nbsp;we look at who we are; our gifts, our talents, our abilities, our life situations, our temperment.&nbsp; Based on what we see, we determine whether or not we should pursue our calling.&nbsp;We look to see if we are up to the task. &nbsp;We are looking at it from the wrong side.&nbsp; It is not about who we are, but who God is. &nbsp;None of us are fully prepared for what life throws our way.&nbsp; But God knows&nbsp;us intimately and&nbsp;wants to show Himself through&nbsp;each of us if we will let&nbsp;Him; if we will trust Him.<\/p>\n<p>I did not know how I was going to handle five kids.&nbsp; I was not prepared, but God was.&nbsp; He provided over one hundred people who helped us the first year.&nbsp; He brought other moms in my life to&nbsp;teach me, encourage me, and support me.&nbsp; He gave me Himself in such wonderful ways that brought peace, wisdom, and strength.&nbsp;&nbsp;He will do the&nbsp;same for you.&nbsp; He is an equal opportunity God.&nbsp; He loves to take ordinary women and have them do extraordinary things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am not super woman.&nbsp; I am an ordinary woman who just happened to have five children in a very short period of time.&nbsp; This feat was made possible by having four babies&nbsp;at once.&nbsp;(My husband and I believe in efficiency&#8230;)&nbsp; &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/?p=62\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.karen-gustafson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}