Angela Cross had been married to her high school sweetheart when she swallowed the abortion pill that would end her baby’s life. She did so out of fear; her husband had been unfaithful to her, and Planned Parenthood informed her that the child in her womb was merely “a tiny clump of cells.”
Angela told Live Action News, “Planned Parenthood had assured me my baby would feel no pain because it wasn’t even a living human being yet. But for 20 years I struggled with the grief of aborting my first child — though knowing God had forgiven me, I couldn’t forgive myself.” She and her husband later divorced.
As a woman, Angela knew in her spirit that her body was harboring life. She realized that many post-abortive women like her internalize the trauma of ending a pregnancy. She felt strongly that she had been carrying a son and decided to honor him with the name Josiah.
“Not knowing I the name I had chosen for my aborted child, my mother went to the Lord in prayer, and he also gave her the name Josiah,” Angela said. “For me, it was confirmation that my baby was in heaven.”
When Angela later married Tanner Cross, a loving man with solid Christian principles, the couple was eager to start a family. They could not have known, however, that their desire for parenthood would be marked by disappointment and heartache as years passed with no pregnancy.
Tanner told Live Action News, “We were both evaluated by doctors but were told our fertility levels were fine, that nothing should be preventing us from getting pregnant. Doctors recommended we try intrauterine insemination (IUI) but after two years of failed treatments, we were frustrated and asked the Lord for guidance.”
An unexpected turn of events
Four years marked a turning point. Tanner, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary in Virginia’s Loudoun County school system, was suspended from his job by taking a stand against the district’s transgender policy, refusing to address students by their preferred pronouns and publicly denouncing the sexually explicit books students were compelled to read. It was during this turbulent time that Angela and Tanner encountered a couple who convinced them to consider becoming foster parents.
Tanner said, “When I testified before the school board in an appeal to remove sexually explicit books from the schools, we met Bev and Chip, whose foster children — having suffered prior sexual abuse — were also testifying how their wounds had been reopened by being forced to read sexually graphic books in their classrooms. They helped us see how we could make a difference as foster parents and mentored us throughout the process.”
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But the new road to parenthood was fraught with a different set of challenges. The Crosses decided to work with a private foster care provider. Gender or ethnicity was irrelevant to the couple – they would love any child. Yet while the agency would allow the Crosses to foster a child of any race, they would not be permitted to adopt a child who was not Caucasian like them.
“We had struggled through so many hardships,” Angela said. “Years of infertility and now, we were ready to become foster parents, yet nothing was coming to fruition. The state has control of who has access to children being placed for adoption. We were questioned about how we would handle a transgender child and were open that we would adhere to our Christian values when raising our child. So, we were disqualified from adopting a transgender child.”
As if in answer to prayer, the couple received a call from a teacher friend of Tanner’s who told them about a baby being placed for adoption after being abandoned by a methadone addict.
Angela said, “We fell deeply in love with this baby and believed he would be ours. We had him for only a month. When the baby’s state-appointed attorney learned about Tanner’s battle against the school, we lost our chance to adopt him.”
As their debts mounted, a friend stepped up to offer financial assistance.
“Our benefactor told us the Lord wanted to bless us and return the money that was lost so that we could try again,” Angela said.
In all, the Crosses experienced eight failed adoption attempts.
God’s plan comes to fruition
Yet, it’s always the darkest before dawn.
Tanner’s unwillingness to bend to political pressure may have produced many challenges for the Crosses, yet one man, Ryan Bomberger, a pro-life activist and founder of The Radiance Foundation, was impressed by Tanner’s courage, and he would be the impetus for setting into motion God’s perfect plan.
Bomberger attended the next school board meeting to advocate for Tanner, and then connected with the Crosses on Facebook where he saw a heartfelt post by Angela. He reached out with a startling proposition.
“I had posted on social media about the pain of being rejected for adoption based on our skin color,” Angela said. “Ryan called and said he wanted to award us a grant to cover the cost of our adoption. After many unsuccessful attempts working through an agency, we adopted our son Josiah privately.”
The Crosses are grateful for Josiah’s birth mother who, they believe, performed the most selfless act of love when she relinquished her baby.
Angela said, “There’s nothing more Christ-like than for a birth mother to sacrifice her own heart and give us her beloved son. The Lord restored everything that had been stolen from us. I look at him and realize the weight of my sin, but also see how much God loves me. He has blessed and redeemed us with this beautiful baby.”
Josiah is bi-racial, as was the child Angela had aborted years earlier.
“The name ‘Josiah’ means ‘Yahweh heals,’ and every day Josiah heals our hearts,” Angela said. “He smiles a lot, he’s so joyful. I heard the Lord say, ‘I gave him a smile for every tear you’ve cried.’ If it weren’t for the generosity of Ryan and the blessings from godly friends who were obedient to the Lord, we might have just given up.”
