PAXbaby is celebrating Valentine’s Day with 13 days of Peace & Love leading up to the big HEART day itself! Today we get silly and then serious as we take a look at a PAXbaby favorite rock band and a sweet love story that keeps it real.

Even moms are allowed to like cool music, and even moms are allowed to make cool music, right?  PAXbaby has Gwen Stefani for years now! We both grew up in Southern California, and in high school, I swear I was 1 step ahead of her fashion!Does that mean I wore bright yellow Doc Martens and dyed the bottom 2 inches of my hair PINK? Yep, I did it, and I did it before the rage hit MTV, just ask my mom! I also favored a light blue tutu and my favorite coat was green velvet, real fashion trend setter, eh?  Anyway, when Gwen became a mom, I was not surprised that she and her hunky husband, Gavin Rossdale, babywear!

The couple have been spotted wearing their little boys on multiple occasions! Gwen Stefani, you are cooler than cool, you have a great body, your husband is a great dad, you’ve got it going on! Rock on, babywearer!

Lately around the blog-o-sphere, I’ve seen quite a few gals include honesty and being “real” in their yearly resolutions and goals.  Following along in that mindset, I thought I would clue my readers in to why I brag about and truly love my husband.

I don’t just BLOG/BRAG about my husband.  I truly do love this man.  He rocks my world (I just HAD to get him to smile!)  Unfortunately, he hasn’t always been the love-of-my-life.  We’ve lived in some dark days and not many knew.  I did really well hiding it and I was ashamed that MAYBE all those who told me to not marry Hubbie, might be right.  Thankful, God had other plans.

When we got married, we were so very very VERY young.  HA!  The fact that I am almost 28 years old AND have almost been married for 8 yrs, tells you, when I got married, I was a spring chicken!  We both were.  It was ok.  We had plans.  We had goals.  We were gonna “blow this joint” and make tons of money and have fun.  We knew what we wanted and we knew just how we were gonna get it.

Some of our marriage problems were my fault.  Some of our problems were my husband’s fault.  I am NOT throwing him under the bus, but he was not ready to be married.  I spent so many times just crying and pleading with him to pay attention to me.  I expected him to fill all my needs.  I expected so much more from him than he was giving me.  I felt cheated out of my perfect marriage that I expected to have.  I did anything and everything I could to make him notice me.  Not sexually.  Emotionally.  He helped a little bit around the house. We still had fun in those years, but he made some really stupid choices and didn’t want me to have any input in those decisions that were gonna effect me AND our “future”.  I was so hurt.

Then, Easter Sunday 2004, I found out that I was expecting.  I was so scared.  I knew we couldn’t afford a child.  We were children ourselves.  I can remember crying when I found out that I was pregnant.  I was not expecting this.  During this time, we had racked up quite a bit of credit card debt.  We planned on Hubbie getting a really good paying job when he graduated with his degree, but he didn’t.  Hubbie was working two jobs and going to school.  Then he was put on academic probation.  We had made a bunch of stupid financial decisions and it all kinda fell on top of us once we knew we were pregnant.  I think this is when our marriage began to slide along rock bottom.  We were forced into this extremely stressful position.  Hubbie took a job that I didn’t want him to have.  He was miserable at it.  I was working and very excited to be having a baby, but my husband wasn’t.  I was devastated.  I wanted us to both be happy and excited.  Hubbie told me that he was scared and wasn’t ready to grow up yet.  We fought like cats and dogs.

December 2004, Bubbie was born and he became my world.  Hubbie had quit the car dealership, worked with his dad for a little while and then had gotten a good paying job shortly before having Bubbie.  It felt good to have some stability, but I was still working.  I felt like a failure of a Mother, by working and not being able to take care of my child.  With this(Hubbie) job, came horrible working hours.  It was a very physically demanding job and horrible hours- split shift and nights.  Bubbie became my focus.  If I wasn’t working, I was with Bubbie.  We played.  I took pictures of him.  He became my buddy.  That is the way we lived for the next year.

I remember the day my world and our lives changed.  For the better.  Hubbie had been sick with a kidney stone and if he missed any more time from work, he would be fired.  I was on my way to pick up Bubbie from my in laws and Hubbie let me know that he couldn’t go work that night.  I can remember the knot that formed in my stomach.  I was hurt and angry.  I didn’t understand how my husband could fail so miserably as a husband.  To just leave a job knowing that your family NEEDS it…..  I was raised to just do it- whether you didn’t like it or not- JUST DO IT…. and I felt like he was giving up.

That was a Thursday.  The next day, I sat in my car during my lunch break, wondering and crying and going over the numbers.  The credit card debt was so incredibly high that the minimum payments were quite high.  We just could NOT do it without Hubbie’s salary.  No matter what.  I called Hubbie and cried.  I did not know what was going to happen to us.  I imagined the worst.

I didn’t tell any co-workers for a few weeks.  Hubbie still had another paycheck, so I knew we’d be ok for a week or so.  Then we asked our parents for help.  We promised we would pay them back.  The help from our folks and our 3 credit cards allowed us to make our payments for the next month or so.  During that time Hubbie worked with his father.  He kept Bubbie with him a little bit.  Hubbie also got in touch with a family friend who was helping him find a job in his career field.  Hubbie had to do a lot of brushing up on his skills.

Hubbie did eventually get that job, but during that time, having to max out credit cards and do a lot of financing of our monthly lives- robbing Peter to pay Paul- was humiliating.  I felt like a failure.  I was so angry at Hubbie for letting me down.  And I, like an awful wife, let him know it.  I can still remember the evening that I made sure he knew how badly he had failed as a man, a husband and a father.  Tears sting my eyes when I think about how horribly I treated my husband.  I heard my inner voice telling me to BE QUIET, but I ignored it.  He hurt me and I wanted to hurt him back.  I felt like the weight of the world was on MY shoulders and it was not fair.  That night I was planning on maxing out our last credit card in order to pay rent for the next month.  The future looked bleak and Hubbie had NOT gotten the new job.

A few weeks later, Hubbie was offered a job.  I was thrilled until I found out what the pay would be.  We would be taking a HUGE cut.  Hubbie would be bringing home about 1/2 of what he had been making.  I was devastated.  Why were we given a job at such a low pay grade?  We couldn’t live off of what we would be bringing in.  I did our bills and we would NOT make it.  We could pay all of our bills, but we would have no money left in order to eat, fill up our car, etc.  I was so upset.  We were still doomed.

The evening that Hubbie brought home his first paycheck was the beginning of a new life for us.  I flew off the handle when I saw exactly how much little the check really was.  It was NOT going to cover the bills coming in.  I felt hopeless.  What was I suppose to do?  I was a mother, wanting to be home with my son, but yet, I was working 40 hrs a week from M-F and then picking up every Saturday that I could so that we could make ends meet.  And after all those hours, it still wouldn’t cover our bills.  We had yet another heated conversation.  I yelled.  Hubbie yelled.  I threatened with divorce and bankruptcy.  Hubbie told me he’d give me a divorce and that is how we ended our conversation that night.  I called my mother, crying.  I knew our marriage was over and I just wanted it all to be over.  I wanted anyone and everyone to take away my pain.  My financial pain.  My marriage failure pain.  I didn’t care anymore.  I was just tired of it all.

The next morning, the Saturday before Thanksgiving 2005, my Dad called.  He told me that they had set up a counseling session with a couple at their church.  We were to meet them later that afternoon.  I will never forget that first counseling session.  We cried.  We held hands the entire time.  I think we both knew that if this didn’t work, we were heading for divorce and bankruptcy.  Something had to change.  We talked about how our expectations of our marriage hadn’t panned out and how hurt we were about how our marriage had played out.

After that first session, life got easier.  We began to do our home  work.  We began to work on our finances.  I enrolled in a consumer credit counseling service and they were able to lower my interest rates.  The payments became a little bit more bearable.

A month later my parents put together a Dave Ramsey-FPU course at their church.  We learned how to budget.  We  learned how to respect each other and communicate.  We fell in love again… with life and with each other.  Through FPU and marriage counseling, we became a family for the first time.  We began to feel God’s forgiveness and grace in our lives.  Life became good.  Life was still tough financially.  We struggled through the first few months, but we loved the financial freedom that we felt for the first time in our marriage.  We were finally living off of what we were making.  The credit cards had been cut up.

I write all this, not because I want to embarrass my husband or myself, but to tell others that God has a most beautiful plan for your life.  He had one for mine.  If we had not gone through those really dark days, I wouldn’t know the Lord like I do today.  For me, I needed to go through those dark times, to be able to see who my Heavenly Father was.  I had always believed in prayer, but it wasn’t until I felt God’s forgiveness, that I realized that I was loved.  I grew up in church and in a very loving and Christian home, but for some reason, I never understood that God wasn’t a score keeper.  He wasn’t keep track of the Sunday services that I was missing or why I hadn’t tithed in months.  I was being disobedient by not doing either of those, but, He wanted me more and it took going through a really miserable time, for me to see why I needed my Savior.

I became a Christian at a young age, 12 yrs old, but I didn’t understand what the hard times would be.  I knew they’d come, but I didn’t know they’d come in the form of a loveless marriage or in financial ruin.  Once we began to follow God’s guidance and tithe, the blessings began to flow.  Hubbie got a new job that paid A LOT more.  We were blessed with the news that I was pregnant with Peanut.

Then we were able to pay off our car.  Paying off the car almost 2 yrs early was a complete answer to prayer.  I was then able to stay at home with my sons.  Things in our life began to fall into place and we could see God’s handiwork in our lives, our marriage and our family.

God has continued to shower His blessings upon us and I love my husband more today than I did when we got married.  I am so thankful that I stuck around to now be the mother of Hubbie’s three sons.  Our life still has ups and downs.  We had a roller coaster of a year last year, but we have still been able to see God’s hand in our lives.  God is awesome and a loving Heavenly Father.  And Marriage rocks!

My husband is truly my best friend and my confidant.  He loves me for me.  Hubbie is an extremely hard working man- giving 110% to his job AND at the same time, devoting 110% to his family.  He has development so many wonderful characteristics over the last few years and I am continually amazed at my husband.  I want to grow old with this man.  I love you.