On a cool, crisp day in November, Sarah Fitzgerald awoke with a mission in mind — to sell her wedding dress.

While some choose to keep their wedding dresses and pass them down to their own children, Sarah’s dress had long been a catalyst for painful memories, as she and her now ex-husband had divorced a year ago. In the year following the divorce, Sarah spent countless hours looking at the dress and wondering what to do with it.

As her heart healed, the answer became clearer. On this particular day, Sarah knew it was time to rid herself of the dress that was taking up too much room in her house and space in her heart.

As Sarah’s mother, Penny, describes, “The dress was so big and poofy that none of us knew where to put it, so one day Sarah woke up and said, ‘Mom, I'm going to take this dress and sell it, and I hope somebody will enjoy it as much as I did.’”

That morning, Sarah and her mother packed the dress carefully into the car and drove to Lisa Peterson’s Second Chances, a consignment store located in White House.

When they arrived at Second Chances, Sarah and Penny noticed a young girl who was shopping with her mother for a wedding dress. Sarah and Penny couldn’t ignore the look of dismay on the bride-to-be’s face as she exhausted all the options without finding one.

“Lisa saw us come in and said to the young girl, ‘Well, here's a dress that just came in. I haven't even checked it in yet, but why don't you just give it a try and see if you like it?’” says Sarah.

The bride-to-be’s name was Grace LeBeau, and while she was in the dressing room, her mother, Kim LeBeau, shared with Sarah and Penny that her daughter’s wedding was in three weeks and she was disappointed she hadn’t been able to find a dress. In fact, she had decided if she didn’t find one today, she would find a simple white dress to wear on the day of the ceremony.

As Grace emerged from the dressing room, however, it was clear to everyone in the room that this dress was meant for her.

“It fit her like a glove,” beams Penny. “She came out of that dressing room and was so beautiful that she was weeping, her mother was weeping, and Sarah and Lisa and I began to cry as well. Her mother told us later that for the first time in a very long time, Grace said, ‘Mom, I feel beautiful.’”

Penny says Lisa offered to forego her commission as the dress had just come in. After Kim asked Sarah if she could pay her directly, Sarah told her, “No, please let me do this for you. I feel like this dress was meant for you. Please just let me share in this blessing with you.”

A stillness fell over the room as it became clear this moment was meant to have unfolded in the way it did.

“It was kind of a quiet, sweet moment, and there wasn't a whole lot of talking because we all knew it was meant to be and it was by design,” recounts Penny. “It wasn't about the dress, and it wasn't about Sarah. We all knew at that very moment God had timed things just right for us all to come into that place at that time and for Sarah to be able to take her brokenness and turn it into joy for that young girl.”

As luck would have it, Lisa’s son had grown up with Grace’s fiancée, Andrew Bradford, who summed up this special moment in a post he made to social media:

“We are all on this earth for each other, no matter your beliefs, and it’s got to be the most powerful thing we can experience to bless and be blessed by others.”

We can’t agree with him more.

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