Courage

This post is dedicated to Jay and Candace, who, if you're "in" the Chinese-Adoption-Blogosphere, you know about because they are trying to bring their daughter home from China and fighting the good fight against the CDC to do so.
They put this quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird on their blog:
"Courage is when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what....." Atticus Finch
I spent an hour on the phone with the CDC this morning trying to add my voice to theirs for help, and it was mostly fruitless, but I didn't stop, because it's important to try and do what you can.
Last year, when Dave and I found out the we couldn't file an I600A anymore and because of that we would lose our adoption, people told us it was a useless fight. My senator, the senator from my mom's state, many people on the web in the adoption community all told us it was a waste of time, but we weren't going to give it up because we weren't going to give up Sophie.
And, little by little, you joined us, just a single signature here and there, one at a time.
And it began to look like maybe we might get enough to make some noise, but certainly not in time to help us, but we kept trying, because you don't enter into something like that for yourself alone, but with the knowledge of how it could affect so many others, and if you have the chance, if you have the platform and the opportunity to reach one person who can make a difference for one other person, you owe it to the world to take the time to do that.
And so we kept plugging away, posting more posts, and fielding the arguments and the naysayers, because it was important to make a difference if we could.
And you, you wonderful people in the adoption community and our friends, you kept signing on, one at a time.
And little by little, over time, it was not Dave and I who made the difference, but all of you, with your signatures, with your phone calls, with your effort, with the gift of your time.
You can make the same difference now. People will tell you that it's a waste of your time, and that it cannot be changed, and that congress is too busy or too jaded to care, but you can show courage, Atticus Finch courage, and do it anyway.
Please sign on to these petitions today, and help more children come home to the USA, and help more children all over the world live their lives in families, adoptive or bio-related families, rather than institutions.
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/families-for-orphans.html
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/build-families-not-barriers.html
Thank you for your courage.
xx~
Di