|
If
the Titanic had not sunk… I would not
have my husband and children!
Over
a hundred years ago in an area of
Europe,
Emil married Tererjia and started a family. They
were probably filled with great joy when Joseph
was born to them. But great sadness awaited them
with the birth of another child. Tererjia died,
and it is assumed the child died as well, since
nothing else is ever heard about that little
one.
At
some point, Emil left young Joseph in the care
of others, and sailed to
America
to begin a new life there. Once he was able,
after about three years, he sent for nine year
old Joseph to come to him. Bringing him was a
woman named Mary Clara, who was to marry Emil.
The two boarded the Titanic in April of 1912 and
set sail across the
Atlantic
Ocean.
Later
in the voyage, as the Titanic was sinking, Mary
Clara got a sleeping Joseph out of bed and
brought him up on the deck of the ship. After
tossing him safely into a lifeboat, Mary Clara
lost her own balance and plunged into the icy
water below. She drowned in the undertow of a
lifeboat.
Joseph
remembers sitting in the lifeboat with no
(street) clothes on, his fingernails frozen…
aching. He said music was being played on the
big ship. (In his later years Joseph, along with
other Titanic survivors, would recount the
events of that night in an article in a
Cleveland
newspaper.)
After
being picked up by the Carpathia and brought to
America,
Joseph was unable to reunite with his father, as
Joseph could speak no English, and didn't know
where his father lived. He was sent back to the
original embarking point in
England.
Months later a relative of Emil's named Andreas
would bring Joseph to
America
on the ship the St. Louis, and reunite the
father and son on a farm in Ohio where Emil was
working.
Emil
met and married a woman in
America
with whom he went on to have eight more children. The third
child, George, Joseph's half-brother, would
become my father-in-law in 1974.
God
is completely and awesomely sovereign and in
control of everything. Through the horrific
tragedy of the Titanic's sinking, Emil ended up
marrying the woman in America that he did,
having the children they did, and one of them in
turn with his wife would have the man I would
one day marry. Our own three children also came
as a result of that fateful night in April,
1912.
Could
God have brought George and his children (which
included my beloved husband, and then our
children) into being
without these tragic chain of events? Of
course He could have! But He instead chose
to use those events - including the sinking of
the Titanic, as part of His plan to bring about
something that I consider to be very good
- my husband and children!
It's
a lesson to me time and again of God's good and
sovereign plan being woven into our lives
through all things He ordains and allows.
© 2007 John and Kim Namestnik
www.givengrace.com
Note:
This
story is copyrighted with all rights reserved.
Please ask our permission before using it. Our
email address is on our Home Page.
(Posted 4-13-07)
|
