i hope he loves me more than peanut butter and jelly

You know what I've never liked? Goobers. You know, the pinstriped combination of peanut butter and jelly? Yeah, I definitely have never liked that, but I always wanted it when I was a kid. My mom told me it was nasty, but I wouldn't listen, so she got it to shut me up. I guess I didn't figure out that since I don't like grape jelly, eating peanut butter and grape jelly from the same jar would be awful for me. But I do love me some strawberry jelly/jam/preserves. Take your pick. If it's gelatinous and strawberry flavored, I'm all in. When I was a kid, I seemingly loved peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwiches more than anything else in the whole world...well, almost anything.

We have a lot of funny sayings for how much we love someone, don't we? I love you so much. So much that what? I don't know, just so much. I also love you to death? Really? That sucks. I love you a million bazillion. I don't know exactly what that means, but I definitely saw it written by a very close guy friend on his wife's wall on facebook, and I secretly make fun of him for it now. If he's reading this, then he surely knows it's him I'm making fun of. I love my wife, too, but not in made up quantities. Anyway, one thing that can be a measure of love is your willingness to die for that person. That's what Jesus said, and He knows love, so I won't argue. When I was a kid, I didn't know that was the ultimate love. I hadn't heard the song about how Jesus said that He loved me this much, spread his arms out and died. But in all fairness, if I had said that to my mom, spread out my arms, and died on her lap, I don't think she would have appreciated my clever understanding of the Gospel or my extreme love for her.

So when I was a kid, I wanted to express my ultimate love for my mom, so I picked the one thing that was greater than everything, and I told her that I loved her more than that. My greatest expression of love as a child was to look my mom in the eye and tell her, "I love you more than peanut butter and jelly." That is cheapened now, I guess, since I love a lot of people more than that sandwich. If I love you more than steak or cheesecake, you're doing really well. I hope when Jakob grows up that he loves me more than peanut butter and jelly, at least until he grows up.

Update: they now have strawberry jelly Goobers. I think I'll buy that next week.

for the love of sarcasm

Happy Yom Kippur and a blessed National Sarcasm Day to you. It's interesting to me that today people are celebrating both holidays. Blessing and cursing all in one day. That sounds like my life. I'll be honest, I've never observed Yom Kippur, but I'm sure I have relatives somewhere celebrating right now. As for National Sarcasm Day, I celebrate that every day. I find sarcasm as natural and as essential as breathing. Without either, I would cease to be me, although one would clearly take a greater toll on me. It'd be a tragedy either way, so I'll keep doing both on a daily basis.

Maybe I've mentioned this on my blog before (I'm too lazy to research), but my delicious brand of sarcasm wasn't necessarily a welcomed entity in the south. Many people took me (and themselves) too seriously at our church down there, and so when I would say something sarcastically (in conversation or while preaching), some people would get offended. Now, had I said "just kidding" at the end of the joke, I would have been off the hook. It's like insulting someone and adding, "bless his/her heart" or "God love 'em," and feeling like you did nothing wrong. To many of them, sarcasm is saying something that's not true and quickly tagging "just kidding" at the end before you had time to process the information. That's not sarcasm. That's telling a joke. I don't tell jokes. I say stupid things that amuse me, and sometimes others, and I let you sort out whether I'm being serious or not. You see, I give people credit for being intelligent individuals - no doubt a stretch for some - and I believe that using your brain, you can deduce whether or not I'm being serious. So I may be joking, but I will never tell you that I'm just kidding as a form of explanation to you. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. So, please, for the love of sarcasm, stop saying just kidding every time you say something that's supposed to be a joke. Give it a try. It will make you feel better.

Happy Sarcasm Day. It's my favorite holiday of the year. Just kidding.

i'm glad he looks like me

I like to think I have a good sense of humor. Sure, it's abstract, but it's still pretty good. Still, there are some things that do not make me laugh. For instance, I will not laugh at things I've heard a hundred times - well, there are some words that will make me smirk till the day I die - like when someone makes a joke about my last name. It's old and very unoriginal.

There is one very unoriginal joke that I do not understand. Since Jakob has joined us, I've only been the subject of this joke a couple of times, but it annoyed the crap out me - so much so that it has inspired a blog post. I was worried I would be asked this question in jest a lot, since I didn't expect Jakob to look anything like me. I was so excited when I realized that he does, and not just because it should stop asinine questions. You see, I don't think it's funny when someone says to a dad (especially me), "So are you sure he/she's yours?" What kind of joke is that? The punch line to that joke is, "your wife's a whore." If you came up to me and said, "hey, Jeff, your wife's a whore. Haha, just kidding," I would forgive you only after assaulting and battering you. I think most husbands feel the same way. So why is it okay to make the same joke worded a different way? The answer is easy: it's not.

We'll deal with what looking like me means for him when he gets older later in life. For now, I'm glad he looks like me, if for nothing else, so no one can ask me that question without revealing how dense they are.

what is love? baby don't hurt me.

I'm going to do my best to tell you how I feel about Jakob. I've had a full day to process it, and I think I can explain it. Here's my best shot.

I've never met anyone as incredible as my wife. I have loved her more than I've loved anyone else ever. She has been on a level all by herself as far as my love goes. I love her way more than anyone else, including everyone else in my family. That's not a knock on my family, either, because I love them way more than I love you. And that doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on you, because if like me enough to read my blog, chances are I love you way more than I love the Golden Girls. But I digress. So Sarah is on a much higher level as far as my love is concerned, and no one has ever been on her level before, but when I saw Jakob for the 1st time, I realized that she now had company. Yes, it's a different kind of love, but it's there, it's real, and it's as deep as my love for his mommy. I would die for him, and I'd kill for him.

Maybe that sounds scatter brained, but it's the best I've got. Welcome Jakob. I love you.

viva revolution (finally)

This was my last attempt at preaching at New Hope. It was a bittersweet time that took place 3 weeks ago. My DVD ripper wasn't working, so I had to get my good friend/mentor/boss TOM to take care of that for me. I always like preaching, and I love the people of New Hope, but it was my time to say good-bye to many. Others will get our good-bye within the next week, as we'll be moving to Kalamazoo to work at this cool CHURCH. We're excited about that, but we'll miss our friends and church family here.

And, for the record, the great joke about sacrifice came from THIS GUY when we had lunch a couple weeks after the layoff. Taco Bell inspires brilliant thoughts.

Hope you enjoy the message. Actually, I don't care if you do or not. At least enjoy the intro video with the sweet sounds of the Orange County Supertones in the background. Stunt it.

Oh, and we'll be parents tomorrow. How awesome is that?

Viva Revolution from Jeff Selph on Vimeo.

an odd job history

My dad used to recruit and place people for jobs, back when there were jobs in West Michigan to fill. He taught me a lot about the pursuit of a job, how to act in interviews (even though his advice made me come off as arrogant - thanks, Dad), and how to go about following up. One of the things he told me as a teenager, and every time I've sought new employment since, is that you never get the first job you apply for, so make sure you apply for a lot. It seems like a logical piece of advice, especially in today's economy. It hasn't turned out to be the case for me yet, but it still sounds like good advice.

Sometimes I get annoyed about my church job history, especially when I consider that I have stayed at just about every secular job as long as I've been at my church jobs combined. And it's not like I'm looking to jump around, either. I have actually taken every job with the aspiration of being there a long time and really making a huge impact, but it hasn't happened that way. But then I look at how each job came about, and I realize that it's been all God's doing. Did you know that I never applied for my job at Baymeadows? I just told the pastor that I'd like to be the youth pastor when they hired someone to replace Phillip, and that's what happened. I also never applied at New Hope. I was at my wit's end at Baymeadows, and I sent Charles an e-mail, asking him to pray for my situation as I was going to look somewhere else. Next thing you know, I'm the children's pastor at New Hope.

Now, I did apply at Kalamazoo Community, but it was the first job I applied at. And, once I was certain that God (and I) still wanted me to be a youth and/or children's pastor for a while, it stood alone at the top of my list of churches I'd like to work at. So if I had only applied for one job, and it was a job I really wanted, I would be in the exact same position I am now: hired by KCC. We know it was all God, too. Seriously, when I was told I had 8 weeks of pay before NH cut me off, I thought this was going to be impossible. I felt a little better when I was told it was closer to 12 weeks, but I was still a little nervous (and by a little nervous, I mean I hardly slept). But God took care of it. He already knew where He wanted us.

We are really excited about going back to Michigan. Yes, we will miss a lot of our friends in Ohio, but there's just something about going home. I've wanted to go home for 5 years. And God knew that when we had a child, we wanted to raise him in Michigan (I only told Him every day, just in case), and now we will be. We've also prayed that when we had a child that Sarah would be able to be a stay at home mom, and now that's feasible, too. So God is giving us many things we've asked for over the last 5 years all at once, even if it wasn't exactly the timing we had in mind. God's just that cool. And that's why we like Him - after all, we only love Him, because He loved us first.