The Prophet's Wife
A Facebook post I dropped on my personal FB page like a bomb:
THE PROPHET'S WIFE
I’ve made the conscious decision to share some very personal circumstances publicly. This has been brewing for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have the guts to actually take this step, but recent life events have brought me to my knees, so I’m doing it now.
I understand the risks. I know human nature. People deal with their own limitations and demons, which makes an already small window of understanding even narrower. I know there’s no guarantee that people will understand me. I know that my story, once it fully emerges, is polarizing and, in parts, shocking, and I know that the consequences of sharing these parts of my life could be harmful to me. Personally, and professionally.
Is it safe in our society to speak the truth? I’m talking about the innocent, raw, God-honest truth of the life you’ve experienced? We like to think it is, but is it really?
I know that sharing these parts of myself means risking losing people, the few friends I have, my family’s acceptance, and the respect of my acquaintances, but it’s a risk I must take.
THE KNOWING
One reason for taking this step now is what I experienced two summers ago. Something happened to me that shook me to my core. It’s difficult to explain in words, and since I don’t know how to describe it beautifully, I’ll say it in the simplest way:
One summer day, at home, I was suddenly filled with a deep and absolute, cellular-level knowledge that I couldn’t question at all. It came from the deepest parts of me, but was not just me; it was beyond me, was perfect, absolute, and complete, and it told me this:
If you don’t share the secrets of your life before you die, and leave this earth with your story untold, you will feel that you failed the primary reason why you came here. And your regret of that missed opportunity will be devastating and irreversible.
And I knew that this was true.
I don’t care what clever thing someone might want to suggest about that moment; to give it an intellectual explanation, some rotten analysis that reduces and trivializes it, to explain away a Supernatural intervention. I know it was God. And I don’t care how eloquently and convincingly someone might want to argue otherwise. That argument would mean nothing to me, would be hogwash, because there is no counterargument for me. This was beyond words and intellect. This was complete body knowledge.
THE BOOK
So, I got to work in earnest. I began to collect my notes and writings about the events of my life that I’ve been working on for over thirty years, with the intention of finally finishing my book, "The Prophet’s Wife." This book, which I’ve worked on for so long, is meant to be an account of faith, the story of how I met my late husband, the one portrayed in the picture above, an end-time prophet with an international prophetic Christian ministry on the internet. He passed away in 2023. That’s me sitting next to him. It’s a very old picture of me, I was very young there, – and naïve. I wanted to tell you what happened when I met him, and about the crazy and frightening events that followed, a prayer trip on a train across Europe –the craziest trip of my life –a journey filled with spiritual warfare, buildings catching on fire, a feverish search for God’s love, abuse, suffering and trauma, boundless faith, and growth, all tangled up in one confusing lump that I’m still trying to sort out.
MY JOB
But I’m a teacher. That’s my job. And since no one understands the absolutely crushing workload of teachers in today’s America unless they’re actually teachers, the 17 hour workdays that I pull in September from Monday to Sunday, that slowly kills me, body and soul, I’ll just summarize, that the writing of this book has been so painfully slow, and constantly interrupted by my job, that moving forward at this rate, the book won’t be finished until I’m about 115 years old.
THE $50,000 PLAN
So, I began to think about other ways to speed up the process.
I’d made calculations and decided that if I got at least $50,000 from the aftermath of a long, drawn-out legal battle that had been going on for years, and was finally approaching its completion, I would use that money to take a year off from teaching – a sabbatical – and write my book. Lately, I had begun to suspect that the outcome of this battle, the division of my late husband’s estate that was supposed to salvage my financial future, might not leave me very much. Since it had started to look like little would be left, and since almost all of it had already been stolen from me, I decided that at least I could use what remained for something good: to write my testimony with the scraps I was left with, and to walk away knowing that while everything else was stolen, at least I used what was left for something good and GAVE MY ALL.
THE INHERITANCE THAT VANISHED
The next thing that happened is the second thing that happened that drove me to where I find myself now. I received an email from my former lawyer — the one who filed my bankruptcy in 2021 for the roughly $50,000 of credit-card debt I’d accumulated simply to survive, to pay rent and food. I had filed for bankruptcy because, even though the court had ordered my husband to pay me $5,000 a month in spousal support in our separation, he never paid. And because he didn’t pay, I was unable to manage my monthly credit card payments. He also refused to cooperate with the court-ordered division of ALL our assets — such as selling our marital home or buying me out of it. When I had begged that he at least pay off my credit card debt, which he could have easily done, he refused that, too. And since he didn’t, the bankruptcy court went after the house he was so proud of during his lifetime.
I was at work when I read the lawyer’s email, scrolling through my phone after student dismissal, as I usually do, when my eyes landed on the email.
The email stated that the house had been sold, and I was left with nothing.
The house that had once been worth over $900,000 sold for $525,000. But after all the other, endless administrative fees were taken out, such as the approximately $130,000 lawyer fees that the bankruptcy lawyers had spent battling my husband’s in-laws living in the house for over 2 years for free after my husband’s passing, the legal fees of those battles, the late fees that had accumulated, the unpaid mortgage, the US. Marshal fees for evicting the in-laws, the fees for the seven dumpsters of trash that I filled with my bare hands, the realtor’s fees, and finally, my original debt, the remaining $44,000 credit card debt that I owed (and the sole reason for losing the entire house) – I was left with nothing from that $525,000 house sale.
THE DESPAIR
I read the email, and my head started buzzing. I stared at the words on my phone screen, and all these thoughts began crisscrossing through my mind. I saw all my future plans go up in smoke. I thought about my retirement, and how I hadn’t accumulated one in this country, because I’d spent all my working years working for free for my husband’s ministry, building his empire, and how I had nothing to show for it, and how I didn’t have a retirement in Finland either, my country of origin.
I thought about my failing health, which was a ticking time bomb, my heart valve issues, caused by a medication Kaiser had given me last year, and how there was nothing I could do about that either, and the $10,400 I lost last summer to a “law firm” that was actually a scam operation masquerading as a law firm when I tried to hold Kaiser accountable for damaging my heart permanently, and how I still owed $5,000 for paying them.
And I thought about my wrists, both of them, needing a series of surgeries, bones taken out of them, others fused together, which would weaken and shorten my hands, and the surgeon’s words, that if I didn’t do it, I might end up with metal plates in both hands, and how I’d then have to decide if I wanted the metal plates on my wrists to tilt slightly upward, so I could type on a keyboard, or slightly downward, so I could wipe my ass.
I thought about my sleep apnea, my cracking knees, my constant lower back pain, the space rent of my mobile home that rose every year and the fact that I wouldn’t be able to survive on my teacher’s pension at age 67, because my teaching years were too few, and how I’d somehow have to hobble on and continue working, if my body still worked, with my metal hands, and my cracking knees and my breaking back.
And I thought about my book, my story, which I’d never be able to finish because of my job…and I held my head, and I breathed, and I breathed, and I breathed…
THE CHOIR
When I came home, I sat in my car, reread the email with the “calculations,” and cried.
I thought about my future, which, from every logical standpoint, had now been destroyed. I thought about my many prayers to God, how I’d pleaded to Him for years for justice in the division of my husband’s estate. And I reminded Him of my sacrifices, my years of service to Him, my marriage to the prophet that I entered against my wishes, and how I slaved in his house for all those years to build the prophet’s empire, his ministry, for nothing, and how I was abused and how my name was slandered and dragged through the mud, and how lies were spread about me when I was innocent and didn’t do the things I was accused for...
And as I sat in my thoughts, despairing, something happened to me that often happens, especially in moments of despair:
A song began playing in my head.
It was a song I hadn’t heard for years – a modern-day Christian worship song. I used to listen to it years ago at a Bible study or maybe a church I visited. Let me be clear: I don’t usually listen to Christian worship music; I don’t like it. I find it lame and inauthentic. Most of it smells like religious showmanship to me and reminds me of all the hypocrisy I’ve encountered in churches, especially here in America.
But this song was always one of the few exceptions.
There was always something about this song. I felt it.
So, as I heard the song in my head, I pulled it up on my phone, because I knew that God was trying to speak to me, and I needed to hear the lyrics.
And as I listened, it hit me, the realization of what this was all about and why.
There’s a moment in the song that I can’t listen to without crying. I’ve heard it probably a hundred times by now, and each time the song reaches that moment, the tears come, they just flow, and I feel God in it so strongly, and I know what it’s all about, and what it was always about.
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) Live - Hillsong UNITED
The moment I’m talking about is when the choir sings. I don’t mean the parts where the girl sings, as beautifully as she sings, that’s not the part, I don’t care about that part.
I mean the moment when the silence falls, and the crowd takes over and begins repeating the lyrics (at 3.44. If you listen to any other version of this song, know that for me, it needs to be the live version with choir, no other version matters to me. Click on English subtitles. They'll show on the screen.)
The choir sang:
Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders/
Let me walk upon the waters wherever you would call me/
Take me deeper than my feet would ever wander/
And my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior/
That’s the moment when I hear Christ’s love, the unquestionable love of a Savior, through the voices of the sea of people, and their barefoot faith. I don’t know their stories, but I hear their pain and their trust despite their circumstances, which they call out from that dark auditorium in blind innocence, like children. That’s what moves me.
Because it’s real.
I knew that I’d arrived at a place like that. And as I listened on, He spoke to me through the song.
THE CALL
Remember, He said, what I called you to do? I called you to trust Me like that, to walk like that, to where your faith is without borders, where every footstep relies on Me, in blind faith, when you don’t know what’s coming, and where your foot will land, and whether you’ll stand or sink, and there’s nothing to guarantee you’ll ever make it. But you take the step anyway.
THAT’S FAITH.
No inheritance to rely on, no money in my bank account, no nicely lined-up future, no plan B, no health to put my trust in.
I realized that I’d put my trust in these things. I’d banked on that inheritance because I had thought that surely God would give me at least something from that estate, and surely, the United States justice systems wouldn’t be that BLATANTLY CORRUPT, and would recognize the outrageous financial abuse that led to my bankruptcy and my tireless work to assist in the sale of the house, and surely they'll find a way to leave me at least a little bit, so I’d be able to write my story, my truth, and finally step out of my spiritual closet, and show up as who I truly am, a deeply spiritual person, with a testimony of Jesus Christ.
Would you? He said.
And there was a pause, the kind of pause when a fast-moving train comes to a screeching halt.
He began to remind me of what He had told me two summers ago, and He showed me how I was still hiding and playing it safe, trying to come up with some polished and acceptable way to show up in the world, to tame the storm within me.
You’re still trying to put Me in a box, He said.
And I knew it was absolutely true.
I knew I’d never show up on my plan, the $50,000 – write a book-plan. I’d never have the guts to show up as myself like this. In my naked spiritual truth. Because my fear of rejection was that strong.
I knew that my feet would never wander to this point on their own.
I understood, deeply and fundamentally, that this was the truth and the only way.
I accept it now.
I understand – everything.
I understand why He had to strip me naked and take everything because that’s what it takes for me to open my mouth finally, and why it was NECESSARY.
In fact, if I were God, I’d do it to myself.
It’s the only medicine that works on me.
I’d never come out of my spiritual closet any other way. Never. That’s how scared I am of rejection.
I’m a wimp. And that’s my problem.
God speaks things to me, not all the time, but from time to time, and when He does, it’s clear. He directs me to do something, but I delay, delay, delay, and then I end up never doing it. I put it on a shelf, and save it for later, for that glorious, mythical day in some distant future when I finally begin to walk in my truth and share what He’s told me to say and do – a day that never comes.
I’ll give you an example.
THE HOMELESS
Two months ago, I found my husband’s daughter homeless on the streets and decided to begin raising money for her to fix my husband’s truck as a temporary shelter. I didn’t do it on my own. God orchestrated it; it was clear from the beginning to the end, by how it unfolded and all the events that followed. You can scroll down in my old posts to find that story.
But what I’ve written there is only part of the story.
After my husband’s daughter got the truck, Jesus began to speak to me about the homeless. Not with words, but by putting thoughts in my mind. He told me to write about the homeless and ask for donations for a bus. And He gave me the idea of converting a bus into a mobile shower that would travel the streets of San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and Vallejo, wherever the homeless are, and go to them, and let them wash themselves.
Give my people their dignity back, He said.
Okay, but the audacity, I thought. Hey, here’s little me, Eva Aguilera, and now that I’ve successfully raised the money for the truck, all this success has gone to my head –that’s what they’ll say – because now I’m asking for a WHOLE BUS!
Who does she think she is?
Is she trying to start her own church?
Has she gone mad?
Raise the money and donate the bus, I heard. And tell them you’ll go on the bus yourself and pray for my people on the streets and listen to their stories and give their dignity back.
DIDN’T I CALL MY CHURCH TO WASH MY PEOPLE’S FEET? He said.
“Okay, but what about my job?” I asked Him, the voice in my head.
“When will you give me the time to wash your people’s feet? I don’t have the time and money to go and wash your people’s feet. As much as I want that.”
Isn’t it ironic?
Take the time, take the time, I heard.
And I thought about how to write this piece, and how to do it beautifully, and how I'd put it on Facebook, but simultaneously wondering how in the world I'd make it make sense, and how I’d cough up the words, and do it in a way where I wouldn’t lose my face…
But of course I never found the time to write it, because then I had to go back to work again, and August hit me like a sledgehammer. Suddenly I was busy hauling classroom furniture again, participating in numerous meetings, creating lesson plans, teaching, solving problems, and running, running, running like the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, holding the clock, with no time to stop to talk, shouting I’m late, I’m late! For a very important date..!
And that’s how two months passed by in the twinkling of an eye, and how God’s words disappeared into the mist, while I was busy running after the clock...
But now I’ve arrived here. And as I stand here, surrounded by ruins, on the threshold of my future, I hear another command, another request, more terrifying words.
Show them your faith. Show them who you are. SHOW THEM HOW DEEP THE RABBIT HOLE GOES!
(And I placed this website link in the comments ).