Super Shearers: Baby Boy’s Name and Pregnancy Progression Pics!

Baby Boy #2’s name is….

Noah

“Rest and Comfort”

Christopher

“Christ bearer”

Shearer

But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God,
    slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Turn to me and have mercy on me;
    show your strength in behalf of your servant;
save me, because I serve you
    just as my mother did.
Give me a sign of your goodness,
    that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
    for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

-Psalm 86:15-17

Noah means "rest and comfort." His name has lots of meaning to us, and we are thankful for Christ's comfort, rest, and peace that we have felt. As you may know, Ryan has struggled with significant back pain for the past two years due to a herniated disc in his back. We have been praying and pleading with the Lord for healing and relief of pain for Ryan. At times, it felt like a difficult road as we continued to pray for God to take his pain away and continued to wait and trust the Lord's strength, peace, and comfort would carry us through this time. We wanted the pain to be gone quickly and for Ryan to feel back to himself. The Lord taught us to wait on Him and find our comfort in Him alone and He would meet our every need with or without a physical healing. Ryan received two steroid spine injections which would initially give him relief and ability to return to normal life activities (mostly) but the pain would return and at times be very severe. We prayed for a permanent healing since we knew there was a limit of 3 steroid injections and it wasn't a cure, just masked the symptoms for a time. As many of you know, Ryan had tried several different treatments- physical therapy, spine decompression machine, stretching, different chiropractors, anti-inflammatories, etc. The mid summer of 2013, Ryan tried another chiropractor we had been recommended because his pain was returning after the steroid injection. Ryan began noticing some improvement after his treatments with the chiropractor and felt he was experiencing more relief that he had with any other treatments. He continued to see this chiro and doing stretching at home and we could see a big difference. When his pain was getting worse, he would see the chiro and experience relief. By the end of 2013, we had noticed a huge improvement in Ryan's pain and he wasn't in lots of pain after work or a day of being out and on his feet! By God's grace, Ryan's back pain began improving right about the time Melissa was in her first trimester of pregnancy. This was God at work because Melissa was really tired at the end of the day in the first trimester, and Ryan was feeling better to help in the evenings! Ryan will have some pain in his back, but he has not experienced any of the severe pain in many months. Praise God for His hand of healing!!!! Praise God for his comfort, rest, and peace that He brought to us during this time and continues to remind us of His faithfulness! Thank you for your prayers for our family! Please continue to pray with us that Ryan has complete healing and for the pain to stay away. God is so good to us even through trials! We are thankful for this miracle and had tears of thankfulness to the Lord for His comfort to us as we reflected on 2013!

Christopher means "Christ bearer." Christopher is a family name (Melissa's dad, brother, and cousin) and legacy we wanted to pass onto our baby boy. Our prayer is for Noah to come to know Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior of his sins and to bear the name of Christ in everything he does. We believe God will use Noah in His mighty plan, and we pray Noah surrenders his life and his desires to Christ. Romans 12:2 says "Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”

Melissa is feeling great and loving this part of pregnancy with feeling baby Noah move lots and watching him grow (as her belly grows)! Jax is so excited to be a big brother and was proud to announce baby Noah's name to our parents! It is so cute how Jax says "No-ah" and "Kistopher"! :-) We are looking forward to meeting baby Noah Christopher in May!

Noah’s 20 weeks profile!