The other day when I took a trip back home for the weekend, I found a little slip of paper that I cut out from an itinerary that I received from church who knows how long ago.

The slip read, “You don’t always have control over the cards you are dealt” with the verse Jeremiah 29:11 written on the bottom. I am a sucker for one sentence quotes that have a paragraph of meaning behind them, so I slipped the paper into my backpack and went along my way.

Fall semester has been a long one, that’s for sure. With the season of football games and new beginnings coming to an end, and finals long behind us (can I get an “Amen!”), I can’t help but look back on the last few months and reminisce on all of the things that it has brought with it.

I have been pushing myself all semester to get my life together, telling myself that “sophomore year is my year!” over and over in my head so that I would believe it. At some points, it did feel like my year. I got A’s on the tests I worked my butt off for, missing social outings and parties along the way. I moved out of the dorms and into a new apartment, became friends with the newest pledge class in my sorority, and grew a helluva lot closer with the friends I met merely a year ago. A lot of good stuff did happen, and looking back on the memories I’ve made, I can truly see that they outweigh the bad.

Looking back on the bad stuff that happened, I realize that in the end everything works out. In the midst of something disheartening happening, it’s hard to look at the bright side, and see the future and how something so negative can become something positive and can lead to a new and unexpected path, when given the time.

Sometimes you get a C on a quiz you thought you were going to ace with flying colors, sometimes you don’t get a position that you have been wanting for a year, sometimes friendships that have been so strong in the past will fade, but it’s okay! That C on a quiz may be dropped by your professor because he drops your lowest one, and not getting a position may open up your schedule so you can start something new or apply for something that you wouldn’t have last month, and if you do not want a friendship to fade, call, text, facetime, whatever them and invite them to lunch.

That little slip of paper has been placed in my pencil case so that every time I open it I am reminded that I don’t have control over my life. It’s become a reminder that everything will work out in time. Putting a spin on my guy Forrest Gump, life is like a deck of cards. You can be dealt a crappy hand, but once you get rid of them, you have the opportunity to put them back in the deck and get new ones. You don’t always have control over the cards you are dealt, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t shuffle the deck and deal again.