Jeremy Garton

by Jeremy Garton
(Weston, West Virginia)

What a beautiful site you have here & how wonderful your work is to promote the Rosary! I do have a Rosary story & my story continues to grow day by day as well as my Rosary devotion.
To be honest I feel that it is part of my life's work now to promote the Rosary for Our Lady, and here is why!

I am the youngest of seven children & have always been a good Catholic but never really "said the beads" as my father used to call them. Both my parents were good Catholics but neither of them said the Rosary, at least on a regular basis.

My father passed away in 1987 & my mother passed away in 2007. Mom was ill with COPD, a serious lung disease, which typically ends in a long grueling death, but God had a different plan for my mother.

My sister was Moms care giver and I will never forget the call on the morning Mom died. Julie, my sister called me crying & simply said, "She's gone, Mom died last night". I said without thinking, "I'll be right there". On the way home I called each of my siblings to give them the news.

When I got to Moms house & went upstairs I saw my mother lying there sound asleep and I knew in an instant that Our Lady had been with my mother at the hour of her death. God's plan was unexpected because the evening before I had had a wonderful visit with Mom.

I should not have been surprised at Moms easy death, its what we had all been praying for?

But, death is always a sudden unexpected shock. At the time of Mom's illness I was walking three to five miles a day & while I would walk I continually said The Hail Mary, perhaps hundreds if not thousands of times. Often I would ask myself, why am I doing this, what is the point in saying the same prayer over & over. Occasionally I would throw in an Our Father but mostly I would do Hail Mary's.

When Mom died, it all became very clear to me why I had been saying all those Hail Mary's, it was for my mother. After seeing how beautiful and peaceful my mother was lying there in her own bed there was no question in my mind, Mary had been there with her and from that point on my devotion to Mary started.

I prayed and prayed to come up with something to honor and give thanks to Our Lady and then I began to beg her, "show me, tell me, what can I do for you Mary?"

Never did I hear her voice but suddenly I began to say the Rosary over and over and I could feel things in my life coming together in an awesome way. I have always been a happy go lucky person with a beautiful wife of 20 years and wonderful daughter, but my Blessings abound through the Rosary.

Then an idea came to me to make a huge Rosary out of hand blown glass. We have a local glass artisan here so I asked for his help and so it happened. I have made several large Rosaries and I am honored to say that one of them hangs in my own hometown Catholic church at Saint Patrick's in Weston WV.

Funny thing is, the large glass Rosary is only a small piece of the puzzle, soon I hope to launch a web site to not only sell a few of the large Rosaries but I would like to sell small Rosary hangers to highlight your own Rosary.

My hope is to promote the Rosary by asking everyone to display their own Rosaries as a reminder to say the Rosary. Everyone who is Catholic has at least one Rosary and many of us have several and usually they are tucked away in drawers, hidden away in tiny leather pouches.

All proceeds will be going to charity or to my Church. As the Blessings continue so will my work to repay Mary for all she has done for me. She is our mother and so I ask everyone reading this, When was the last time you talked to your mother?

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