Battlebeads.com

Mary

"The main objective is getting folks to realize that God's really there and we should give Him at LEAST the time in prayer, that we give to hobbies and recreation!"

Mary of Battlebeads.com is a retired lady that has been making affordable rosary beads since July 2009. Mary takes great pride in craftsmanship and perfection.

How did you get started in the rosary making business?

When making rosaries first came into my mind, I pushed it away as ridiculous because my work in life had been in human services basically with paper work. I had never worked with my hands in any kind of trade or mechanical fields so I didn't think this was even a good idea for me. After several months of vacillating about beginning this endeavor, I finally succumbed to it after buying a rosary that had an additional Our Father bead and extra spacing. I don't know why I bought the rosary .. I had many already, but when I saw the error, first think out of my mouth was: "I can do better than THIS!" I began looking around online for parts and supplies and before I knew it, I was ordering enough for a small army!

Your business has a great name. Would you like to share how you came up with it.

I didn't think in a million years that that name would be available, but when it WAS, I thought perhaps it meant I should buy the domain and really put up a site to make it easy and affordable for the average person to get nice rosaries, chaplets and other related items. I wanted to make beautiful rosaries befitting to our Lady and enticing enough that folks would WANT to pick them up and pray. I look for unusual beads and always try to do something a little different or put some kind of twist on things to make them more interesting.

In what ways are you assisting Our Lady's efforts to get people to pray the Rosary?
I'm trying along with many others, to get the word out. Hopefully also, my prices are an incentive for folks to buy and pray more. I try very hard to keep the prices low .. I'm not in this for the money. This is really more an apostolate.

The main objective is getting folks to realize that God's really there and we should give Him at LEAST the time in prayer, that we give to hobbies and recreation! I mean, how can we say we love God if we never have time for Him?! We can say we love icecream and give more time and attention to that than to our Glorious Triune God! It saddens me that many folks just call on God when something's wrong and not to share their daily activities as we do with friends. I have other websites as well that deal with Catholicism and the world in which we live. (mine: http://starkvisions.com/again - one I share with a partner: http://alwayscatholic.com)

I have prayers and meditations on Battlebeads Website and articles on the Battle Beads Blog. But I talk to everyone that will listen about prayer and the power of praying the Scriptures on beads.

Your craftsmanship is really remarkable, how is it you are able to keep your rosaries so affordable?
Thanks very much. I'm actually quite surprised at it all myself really. As I said, I never worked with my hands before and when I began this, I didn't know a gauge from a millimeter or the difference between glass, stones, crystals or looping with wire etc.

When parts come in, I get right to work and turnaround time is generally within 24 hrs. It can be a daunting task to try to find good prices when you can't buy in bulk, have no tax exempt number or any of the other things the 'big boys' in real business have.

But I've been fairly lucky with meeting the right folks at the right time. Sometimes, I just cover my costs and postage, but that's ok. This is not a business to make a living on .. it's the business of making lives better and bringing them closer to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts!

From getting to know you, it is clear you feel the world is in serious need of prayer. For what intentions are you encouraging others to pray?
Oh Gosh .. you don't have enough room in this article for all my petitions! LOL Suffice it to say that in my daily 3pm prayers (Hour of Mercy with the Divine Chaplet kicks it off ... very special time to pray!), sometimes it takes a half hour or more just for the petitions BEFORE I actually begin praying itself! I've been asked this before though and I think I will publish most of my petitions in the very near future. But these are some of the main peitions that I've asked folks to join me in: I always beg these two things to begin with: 1. That every heartbeat, breath, joy, sorrow, tear, step, utterance, action and reaction for every living being in the universe be united to the Perfect Passion of Jesus and offered in reparation for the sins, offenses and blasphemies committed against the Holy Trinity and Our Lady.

In this, I also make this offering for the Intentions of the Trinity, Our Lady, all the angels and saints and for the Pope's intentions and his safety and strength. 2. I always ask too, that the pain and suffering of the souls in purgatory be united to Jesus' Passion, so that purgatory can be emptied into heaven daily during the hour of Mercy. Just a drop of His Precious Blood can do anything, so I ask for the release of souls, especiallly the lost and forgotten there.

We need to pray for all priests, religious and clergy to be given the graces needed to be the servants Jesus calls them to be. I pray for the sick, unborn, dying, the world leaders, those that don't know how much they need God ... the list is very long. Another cause near to my heart are the fallen away Catholics that need to come home. Whether they remain "Catholic" in name only and don't practice or those that actually left the Church for another denomination. Where we have the fullness of Faith with all 7 Sacraments, I personally feel very sad that they traded (in my eyes) Majesty for mediocrity. Lots more petitions, but as I said, I'll put a list out soon :)

We love the fact that you are a patriotic American. Please tell us about the USA Chaplet.
I have never been a politically oriented person and always found politics particularly distasteful. However, I have been very saddened with the state of the nation of late and the direction it seems to be headed. Considering the many prophecies that have been spoken in the last decades, it appears that we're spiriling down a very slippery slope.

The enemies of the Church are no longer merely on the outside, but efforts are thwarted from the inside as well now. In an effort to not offend, we have become entirely too complacent. I found myself thinking and praying about this even in dreams. The chaplet itself was months in the making. The first prayer that came to me was the "Sweetest Jesus, for the sake of those that love You, by merit of Your Holy Passion, lift not Your Protective Hand from us and please save the USA!" (Ulitmately, this was the prayer my Bishop suggested a change of a word and rightfully so, in retrospect, he was spot on with it. He had me change it to BLESS the USA rather than SAVE the USA.) Often, just as I was either awakening or falling off to sleep, other prayers or sentences would come to me .. sometimes during my prayer time. I began to write them down. I have many such writings over the years of thoughts, quotes, musings and prayers that have popped into my head from no where out of the clear blue sky and sometimes when deep in prayer or medatation.

I should mention here that I was not without trepidation in compiling this new devotion. We all say our own private prayers and pray from the heart, but this was something much more than that and much more formal and ordered than private prayer. I had never known anyone that made up a chaplet ... wasn't even sure if lay folks were ALLOWED to do this!

Well I prayed hard and asked for guidance. I went to check my email ... then all of a sudden (never DID get to that email!), it was like it was placed before me .. the colors of the beads, how the prayers should be ordered, how many beads/prayers for the chaplet ... it was like it was all being layed out and I had a hard time keeping UP! lol What was really surprising was the closing prayer .. that came totally out of the blue as I was finishing up and it was literally as if I was taking dictation.

I heard no voices or anything, but it was like I was reading the words for the first time as I was writing them. I receive the Nihil Obstat from the Bishop in early April of this year, so it's a formally approved devotion now for the Catholic world.

Besides rosary beads, what other items do you make?
Chaplets, rosary bracelets, rosary necklaces, key chains, decade trees, peace wheels ... just about anything that you can do with beads, crosses, medals and wire or cord, I'll do. I particularly like designing things that folks dream about. I've had more than a few folks actually write and ask if I'd be open to trying to duplicate an item from a dream or an old memory. It's nice to work with someone and help design a unique piece .. literally a dream come true! :) Have also made a few other rosary designs with all the prayers, but perhaps hanging Pater's or decades 'fingers' ...you can find them on the Unique & Unusual page.

What spiritual benefits can your customers expect when they purchase a rosary from you?

Where it came to me out of the blue, I felt I should share it with others and I was sure it was related to the rosaries. Here's a variation of the prayer I say as I touch each item to the relic: "Blessed Francis Seelos, please hear my plea, bring us closer to Jesus through devotion to thee. If it be the will of our Glorious Triune God, pease heal whoever touches this rosary/chaplet in mind, body and soul according to the perfect Will of God for His honor and glory. Give those that pray these beads an ardent love of the Sacraments and deeper devotion to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts."

How has praying the Rosary brought peace and serenity to your life?
I think prayer is like anything else. It requires discipline. It's very important to develop a pattern I think. I have a short prayer time in the morning and evening. My major prayer time is the 3pm hour of mercy when Jesus died on the cross. I say the Divine Mercy Chaplet, USA Chaplet, Servite Rosary, Regular Rosary along with some other traditional prayers and other small chaplets to saints and angels.

The Rosary transforms a person. You meditate on Scripture every day .. how can it not change a person and give peace and serenity? Sometimes the degree of peace and joy overwhelms and it feels like you are going to burst for not being able to contain it all ... I think this is a little taste of heaven :) I doubt very much if we, in our physical bodies, could survive even a small degree of the real joy of the Lord that we'll experience in heaven as we read in 1 Corinthians 2:9 : "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man what God has prepared for those who love Him."

We need to shake the fence that our family and friends have been comfortably sitting on for waaaay too long and encourage them by our example and with much prayer, to recommit their hearts and lives to Almighty God and our Lady! If we would only devote half the time to meditating on the mysteries of the rosary that we do to recreational activities, we'd transform our lives, families, communities, countries and eventually, the world!

Some people have a hard time learning to meditate. Could you give them some advise on how to "see" and "feel" each mystery?
Just try to recall perhaps movies of Jesus or the bible you have seen and then actually get a 'feel' for the time and step into it, imagining the sites, sounds, smells and environment of the time and event. Each time I can almost always find something else I haven't thought of before. I think of the mystery and what they could have been thinking and feeling along with the before and after emotions/actions of the specific event. Here's some thoughts on the joyful mysteries taken from my site:

Meditation Tips:

When meditating on the mysteries of the most holy rosary, try to put yourself in the picture. Watch Gabriel make his announcement to Mary as she humbly accepts God's Will. Imagine what she's thinking. A young unmarried girl in Israel being pregnant was no small matter .. it meant death by stoning. Yet Mary trusted in God and gave her obedient "YES".

Follow along as she travels to her cousin Elizabeth .. a long arduous journey in those days. Again, her humility abounds as she cares for her elderly cousin's maternity needs while she herself carries the Savior of the world!

See Mary and Joseph's frustration and weariness as they attempt to find lodging during a busy time in Bethlehem; having to settle for an animal shelter for Mary to give birth. Hear the animals rustling about as the angels sing praises. Watch as the shepherds are told and as the 3 kings bring gifts, remember Herod's jealousy over the Child.

Obedient to the Law, Joseph and Mary bring the Infant Jesus to the Temple and hear the prophecies of Simeon and Anna. In humility, they offer 2 doves for their own purification.

Imagine the terror in the hearts of Joseph & Mary upon realizing that Jesus was not among their caravan after traveling a whole day. See their Joy in finding Him and the puzzlement of His Words that He was about His Father's Business.

Thanks very much for your time in this. I very much appreciate getting the word out about the new chaplet devotion because our country and the world, is so much in need of prayer. If we can encourage each other as well as our clergy (Bishops and priests alike) to pray and do penance .. perhaps even public penance, we may be able to mitigate some of the judgement that will certainly befall us shortly from all our decades of extremely bad choices and pleasure seeking. Many pray but not as much as we should and most have forgotten penance completely, sadly ... even many of the clergy.

I think the Bishops should set the example, backed up by the priests, religious, all clergy and filtering down to the laity by setting aside at least a quarter hour a week to do public penance (15 solid contrite minutes of prostrate prayer) before the Blessed Sacrament to beg mercy and call down grace to help fix the wounds of the Church, our world and our eternal souls. I would like to see a national movement begin with this spark and set the country ablaze with new vim and vigor for God, our country and each other.

Funny, that we live like this world is the be all and end all when it's ETERNITY that will last forever!

God bless! ~Mary

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