"If you love a sweater, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." ~ Lori Knutson

I have an old wool sweater, soft and warm, that means a lot to me. It came to me through a good friend who has an incredible knack for finding me the best clothes. Because of choices I made in the past, decisions made in haste, I nearly lost that sweater.

In order to simplify my move from Grande Prairie to Calgary, I gave away a lot of stuff I considered unnecessary - including the sweater. It's true that much of it was life's clutter, too many possessions and things I wasn't using. At that time, it made sense to pare down my life and lighten my load and, most of the time, I didn't miss those things I'd left behind.

In the years to follow, though, I remembered that wool sweater. I thought of it when I walked in the winter and when I skated in the park. I longed for it when I visited Banff and when the temperature dropped to minus 30 outside my window while I worked on a novel. I couldn't remember for sure where it had gone and who had it now. All I knew is that I had willingly let it go.

Isn't that the way it so often goes? In a rushed moment of frantic change, we leave behind us one or two items we wished we'd hung onto. Carelessly, we mistakenly viewed those things as no longer meaningful or valuable, no longer part of our lives. And later on we ask ourselves, "What was I thinking?!" Sad but true.

What's also sad but true is the fact that we don't usually retrieve what's been lost to us by our past choices. What's gone is gone. Part of maturity, of growing up, is recognizing that which is expendable and that which is irreplaceable. A wise person knows the difference.

Still, hindsight is 20/20, and it's easy to look back and wish that events had unfurled differently. That's how regrets are born.

But sometimes - just sometimes - what we've let go comes back to us. This is wonderful and rare - a blessing when it happens. And it happened to me.

Last fall, I was visiting friends in Grande Prairie and doing some laundry in their basement. As I put my clothes in the washing machine, I noticed a very familiar sweater laying freshly washed and neatly folded on the dryer top. "Hey! I know you!"

The story goes that I'd given my sweater to this particular family and in the course of those years, a kid grew into a young woman and out of my sweater. That old wool sweater was on its eventual way to being given away again. I had the chance to intercept it and bring it back into my life - a chance I didn't pass up.

Second chances don't come along everyday and, when those miracles happen, we have to grab hold of what we've lost and vow to never let it go again.