Everything here is made by my family.
I am Michael Halbrook, a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. My wife Suzanne and I have four sons. Between us we write, design, and make things, and this is where those things live:
Books I have written, prayer cards, stickers, apparel, candles (eventually), and whatever else we get around to making. Some of it is for prayer, some of it is for wearing, and all of it comes out of the same house.
Phil 4:4
The apparel started with a verse.
In 2003, on Gaudete Sunday, I asked Suzanne to marry me. The second reading that day was from Philippians, chapter four.
Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice.
That has been the line over our marriage ever since, through four sons and a few hard years and a lot of ordinary ones. So when we decided to make shirts, the name was already there.
Phil 4:4 is how we release apparel. Designs come out when we have something worth making. When a design sells through, it is done - we do not reprint. Not as a sales tactic. We are a family running a small thing on the side, and we would rather make something new than keep reordering the same shirt.
Thomas has a hand in most of the designs. Suzanne has a hand in everything.
The rest of it
The other collections come from my work as a deacon and a writer.
Prayer cards, because people need something to hold. Books, because I keep writing them. Stickers, because our kids thought we should. What shows up here over time will depend on what we actually make, which is a slower and more haphazard process than a proper store would run.
If something sells out and does not come back, that is usually what happened.
If you are local
Message me and I will send you a code to use at checkout for "free shipping", and I will hand you your order rather than mail it. No shipping charge, and I would rather see you anyway.
A note on all of this
I am a deacon and I sell things. Permanent deacons work. Most of us have jobs, and some of us have businesses. That is the ordinary shape of this vocation - one foot at the altar and one in the world, which is where the Church put us on purpose.
What I care about is whether anything here is worth what it costs. So the test I apply is simple: does this add something, or does it just have a cross on it?
If you are looking for prayer, the daily resources at wearedomus.com are there, and the ones that matter most are free. This is the other thing — the things we made with our hands because we wanted them to exist.
Cor Iesu Sacratissimum, miserere nobis. Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.