A Dangerous Woman, A Righteous Man
What voicemails from Erik’s wife tried to rewrite—and what actually happened.
A couple of weeks ago, Erik’s wife left two voicemails for my husband. In them, she questioned my salvation, accused me of lying, and asked to speak with him about “the problem,” which—of course—was me.
This post isn’t about exposing her. It’s about exposing the narrative. The one that casts Erik as the wounded man of God and me as the dangerous woman who led him astray. The one that skips over six months of deception, intimacy, spiritual manipulation, and plans for a future, and replaces it with something cleaner. Simpler. Easier to stomach.
She’s not the first person to try to reframe this story. But the voicemails marked a turning point—not because they told the truth, but because they reminded me how often it gets erased.
What comes next is for subscribers. It includes what she said, how we responded, how I ended up in full-blown rebellion against God, and what happened when He met me there.
First off, I have no interest in villainizing Erik’s wife. I don’t know her at all. The only things I know about her are the details Erik told me while we were together. From his words, I know she “does everything for the family,” she’s left-brained, she appreciates acts of service, and she’s the force in his life that keeps him living a “singular life.” He told me other things in person, but these are the things he put in writing, so I’ll stick with those here.
She is someone who has lived an entire life. She likely works hard, loves her family, her home, and her dogs, and she absolutely didn’t deserve the catastrophe in which I played a part. For the part I played, I am truly sorry. I once sought the opportunity to have that conversation with her in person, but given her response, she wasn’t interested, which I completely respect.
The reason she was calling my husband a couple of weeks ago, I believe, was to alert him to what she called a dangerous online libelous campaign. At the time, I had begun telling my story bit by bit—sharing the truth about the time I spent with Erik—and I was doing so as a way of calling for accountability, mostly from Concordia Seminary and the LCMS.
Shortly before that, I had learned that Erik was teaching again—this time at Christ School of Theology, under the headship of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT).
That’s a lot of words to say: he was once again in a position of pastoral formation.
I was shocked. Especially because it seemed to happen so quickly after he resigned from his previous position when faced with an investigation based on my complaint of sexual misconduct to the president of the Missouri District of the LCMS.
It made me wonder what had happened between the time he resigned and the present day. The further I looked into it, the more I learned. As alleged by someone inside the seminary, Concordia leadership told faculty that Erik’s resignation was not due to a moral failing. Pieces of a puzzle that had remained whitewashed for nearly two years began appearing in color and painting a picture I didn’t expect to see.
Erik avoided public accountability.
It appeared the seminary protected him.
And by February 13, 2025, he was already being given a platform to preach at Best Practices in Phoenix.
At some point, Erik and/or his wife discovered the Reddit account I was using to share my story. Maybe someone sent it to them. Maybe they searched for it. I don’t know. What I do know is this: her voicemail opened by stating that she and Erik wanted to talk to my husband… about me.
Not just me, but my salvation.
She said that while there was some truth to what I was posting, there were also “a lot of lies.” For her privacy, I won’t share everything she said. But here’s what is clear:
Given the content of her voicemails, I assume she does not know the whole story of the affair. Maybe not even 50% of it. Maybe less.
My first reaction was to feel repelled by the way she employed Scripture to frame me as a liar. She spoke as if I were a child in need of correction, and my husband was an ally in her corner—someone capable of reason. Unlike me, who was “the problem.”
As we listened to the voicemails again, the strategy became clear:
Erik’s wife (probably at his behest) was casting him as a righteous victim. That narrative only works if I’m the villain. They are the church-going victims. I am the hell-bound liar.
It reminded me of something from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. A land of make-believe. Black-and-white storytelling. A world where naughty children are punished for their disobedience, and righteous people are justified in silencing them.
And yet—this isn’t a fairy tale.
It’s a true story, and I’m telling it not to cast her as the villain, but to draw the outlines of what I lived through.
What I see is a woman who, from my limited understanding of her, is used to preserving structure. Holding things together. I imagine she values loyalty, stability, and righteousness. I imagine she’s been told a version of this story that makes sense within that framework. A version in which Erik was tempted, misled, and repented. A version in which I was the danger—not the damage.
That’s what her voicemails revealed to me—not the fullness of what she knows, but the story she’s been handed. A story that erases the depth of what actually happened and puts Erik back into a role I imagine he’s most comfortable in: the misunderstood man trying to do the right thing.
If she truly knew the extent of our relationship—the months of messaging, the depth of emotional and physical entanglement, the spiritual manipulation, the plans made, the things said—her voicemails would have sounded different.
But they didn’t.
They sounded like a woman who thinks she’s protecting her family.
And maybe she is.
But she’s doing it by defending a man who, when finally forced to tell the truth, told her only the part he could survive.
Upon our final listen, my husband said, “If she had come to me in earnestness and without the spiritual manipulation, I probably would have talked with her.” I agreed.
On the Affair and the Path to Healing
Nothing is ever just one thing.
But I know this to be true: I was in full-on rebellion against God when I was in the affair. No question about that. I knew what the Bible says about adultery and those who commit it, and I stepped right past that line in the sand (yes, that one) and kept on sinning. When I was with Erik, I was lying to my husband, walking away from my marriage, and deceiving everyone around me in one way or another. What’s worse, I wasn’t even sorry at the time. I shudder to write that—and I praise God that He delivered me from the evil in which I was drowning. Thank you, Jesus.
I even remember the moment right before I chose to embrace the affair with Erik. I looked up into the sky, considered the pain I was in, and said to God, “I told you it was too much.”
Thus, an idol was born.
BLECH. I shudder again. What a gross and prideful way to address our Savior. At the time, I felt justified in saying it. Now, I can see it all for what it was: dangerous sin.
So yes, Erik’s wife was right to sense danger. But what she got wrong was when the danger took place. The danger was what happened for six months, not what came after I spent nearly two years in counseling, processing, prayer, healing, and finding my voice again.
A voice, by the way, her husband heard for six months behind closed doors—and tried to silence when he no longer wanted to hear it.
I know what it’s like to stand at the edge of rebellion and call it relief.
I know what it’s like to sin boldly, and then feel the weight of it crush you.
I know what it’s like to cry out to God from the pit of your own choices—and still be met with mercy.
So if there’s anything redemptive in this story, it’s this:
Even when I stood in pride, God stood with me.
Even when I said, “I told you it was too much,” He didn’t walk away.
He held me as I fought His correction, and He orchestrated my return.
When I finally trusted the sword of His truth to smash the idol, I wasn’t met with shame—I was met with mercy, grace, and love.