…that cartoon Jonah Hill with super powers is incredibly disturbing.

A lot has happened since my last post.  Quite a lot.  We can get to that in a second.  First, I want to talk about that lovably goof-tastic alien with the big blue head: Megamind.

If you have not seen the movie, the premise is this:  Scrawny, blue alien (Megamind) is raised in a prison, destined to battle fecklessly against dashing, beefy superhero (Metro Man) for the rest of his life.  That is, until Metro Man fakes his own death because he’s tired of being a superhero and would rather play guitar.  In the face of a new, much-worse villain in the character of “Tighten,” Megamind finds himself in need of a hero.  When he confronts the now-in-hiding Metro Man about it, this is the reply:

You know, little buddy, there’s a yin for every yang. If there’s bad, good will rise up against it! It’s taken me a long time for me to find my calling. Now, it’s time you found yours.

In other words – you may have grown up as the bad guy, but now it is time to find your calling as a true hero.  Who would have thought a cartoon movie with Will Ferrell in it would reach this sort of existential depth?  In fact, I liked the moral of this movie so much, I used it Sunday morning for the youth group that I now work with full-time as the Assistant Youth Director.

Yes, it’s true:  I have cancelled my original plans for the year and signed on to work at one church in a suburb of Denver until August.  I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but given the premise of the blog, I figure I got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Without harping on the details, the youth group found itself in unexpected need of someone to take on this position.  Since I had been working with the youth group on a volunteer basis for 2 months already, it would make for a smooth transition for the church if I stayed on.  Of course…I had other plans at the time.  Plans like Seattle, San Francisco, Utah.  Cool plans.

So it was decision-making time.  And it was hard.  I spent a week working on an aneurism as I tried to decide whether to stay at the church or continue this year-long tour of religion in America.  I even started meditating and doing “circle-breathing” exercises in the hopes that I would open some third eye and find enlightenment or Nirvana or Kurt Cobain or something.

In the end, I came to two conclusions that solidified my decision to remain Mile High for the rest of the year.  Two conclusions that I hope can offer you some insight next time you need to make a decisions.  And they are neatly summed up in Metro Man’s pithy little speech from above.

1.  “If there’s bad, good will rise up against it.”

Ok, so there was no supervillain wreaking havoc on the city.  No “bad” at all, really.  I’m more focused on Metro Man’s cavalier attitude toward the whole situation.  He trusts that regardless of what he chooses to do, things will work out in the end.

What an infuriating sentiment!  Don’t those people who can just sit back and let things happen drive you crazy?  I mean, I want to control my destiny, make decisions that change the world, not trust that “good will rise up”!

As it turns out, though, Metro Man really isn’t too far off track.  The morning I made the decision to stay, I came across a little piece of scripture tucked away in the book of Romans.  It says, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (8:28).

But what I realized was that – no matter what choice I made – good could come of it.  So I had to take a little cue from Metro Man, and just relax.  Do you ever find yourself stuck between two choices, and you think that one is the “right” choice, and if you don’t make the “right” choice, then things will go terribly wrong?

What if the “rightness” of a choice really just depends on whether you remain open to being used for good, no matter which path you take?

2.  “It’s taken me a long time to find my calling.  Now, it’s time you found yours.”

“Calling.”  It sticks out of the movie like a sore cliched thumb with religious overtones.  I mean, I thought this was just a story about Brad Pitt failing at guitar and Will Ferrell playing with robot-fishes, but then Metro Man pulls out the “C” word?  What?

But it got me thinking.  About how we define a “calling.”  On the one hand, there is this idea that you are called to a long-term vocation for which you were individually crafted.  Your gifts, passions, and experiences all point to this work where you can really find meaning and purpose in life.

On the other hand lies the notion of being called to answer an immediate need.  Sometimes this is the same as your long-term vocational calling.  Sometimes it is about defeating an overweight supervillain.  And sometimes it is about working in a youth group, even though you don’t feel any long-term call to work with youth and have already planned out a year full of adventure and exploration into exotic new cultures and religions.

In short, what I realized is that continuing this year as planned was going to be about me.  But staying with the church is about something more than me.  I’m not saving Africa or anything – I mean, I get paid to hang out with teenagers all day and eat free meals.  But for one of the first times in my life, I made a major decision based on something besides my own desires.

And it felt good.

So all that is to say, my posts will be a little more geographically restricted now.  I’m still exploring outside of the church in my free time, and I haven’t turned off my eye for fun observations.  If anything, working with youth just means I’ll have better stories to write about.

I am not going to stop serving, learning, or growing, and I am not going to stop encouraging you to do the same.  But for right now, my yin is here in Colorado.