"The Bright Side of Hope" with Dr. Julia Attalla
“The Bright Side of Hope” with Dr. Julia Attalla
In reality, there is a lot of ugliness in the world. Pain, brokenness, and all that is un-beautiful. And, yet, some people keep choosing light and beauty and goodness. They not only choose it, but they try to expand it, seeking to bring more goodness, light, and beauty into the world.
Julia Attalla, D, Min. is one such person. Julia noticed she had a heart for sexually exploited men and women and then invested herself in coming alongside that population when she had the chance. Her influence has expanded to becoming the Executive Director of After Hours Ministry in Los Angeles, California. Julia also serves as the Director of Doctor of Ministry Program at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Above all, I see Julia as an advocate for hope. In our time together, Julia taught me the pivotal role of hope and bravery in the midst of life’s brokenness. And how when we persevere in hope and bravery, beauty can grow exponentially. In our lives and in the lives of others.
The Interview
Audio Engineering: Podcast P.S.
Cover photo: Rebecca Wynia
The Interview transcript:
Melissa: If you wouldn't mind starting off talking maybe a little bit about the work that you do, and how you were drawn to it, in terms of the After Hours Ministry that you do.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: That would be awesome.
Julia: Where to begin? So, I work for an organization, After Hours Ministry. We're a street outreach to men and women who are sexually exploited. So, maybe it helps to know a little bit about After Hours, and then I'll go back to kind of my journey into that.
So, every Friday night, we go out to the streets of South Los Angeles and seek to build relationships with the men and women who are sexually exploited. For us specifically, men and women who are prostituted and working as streetwalkers in south LA. So, we drive the what's called “tracks,” so that's where the men and women who are prostituted are working, and we have little gift bags that we give the men and women. So, we drive until we see someone, stop, get out of our cars, approach them. The little gift bags are kind of our non-threatening way of approaching them. Who doesn't want a gift? I always want a gift.
Melissa: Right.
Julia: Also, kind of our way of convincing them we're not undercover cops. Apparently, I look very threatening. Just kidding. But yeah, we just strike up a conversation. We're seeking to build relationships. Our philosophy is, if you're trapped in this situation of sexual exploitation, it's a lot easier if you have a face and a name to call and one day say, "Hey Julia, I need help, where can I go? What can I do?" than to one day decide that you want help and just try to Google “help for prostitutes,” or something, and just start cold calling places.
I've been with women trying to get help, and we've called over 100 places that have been like, "Nope, we're full, “Nope, we're full,” or “you don't quite fit our demographic because of grant funding,” or “no, no, no." It's discouraging and disheartening, and I've been tempted to give up, and I'm not the person that's having the door slammed in my face several times. Just trying to be that hopeful, consistent presence that wants to walk alongside you in this difficult journey of healing.
So, I guess how I got there, I graduated from Bethel University, where I met you, and decided to come out to sunny California to Fuller Seminary, and I knew that I didn't want my studies to just be theoretical. I didn't want to hold myself up in a library and put my head in the books and just get knowledge for knowledge sake.
I wanted to test the theories and paradigms that I was studying and push back in class and have this be ... be a practitioner. Have this have real life implications. So, I was looking for an organization I could get involved with, and one Sunday after church, there was a WOGA meeting. It stands for Women of Global Action. And the topic was sexual exploitation and trafficking. So, I went to the luncheon, and one of the groups speaking was this couple who had just started a brand new organization, which was called After Hours Ministry to pimps and prostitutes. I was like, that's what I want to do. So, I went up and chatted with them afterwards and was like, I have no experience but I have a real heart for this, and is there anyway I could volunteer with you? They're like, "Yeah, come on, come volunteer."
So, I started volunteering with them in 2007, and then in 2010, due to just some personal reasons, they stepped down and asked myself and another woman if we would prayerfully consider taking over the organization. So, we did, and I've been trying to figure it out ever since.
Melissa: Wow.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. So cool. Thank you for sharing the background of your passion and how this has unfolded.
So, just to transition us into the several questions that I have for you about beauty, just kind of as a refresher…so the goal of the blog or website or community that I'm trying to establish is I'm really wanting to redefine this idea of beauty for women in America, specifically I'm wanting to define it as “the life of God at work around us and within us.”
So, I'm inviting people such as yourself to be upheld as mentors for authentic beauty, just because we have so many, I don't know ... There's nothing bad about celebrities, but often times those are the types of people who are upheld as our “beauty” standard, beauty in quotes. I'm just really wanting to hand women some new mentors for beauty, specifically internal and eternal beauty. So, women who are standing up for things like goodness and justice and love, and so that's, as I mentioned to you, that's why I wanted to talk to you today about beauty, just because your heart for these women in the work you do I think is so incredibly beautiful.
So, that's kind of just to transition us before we step into the questions, but yeah, does it feel okay to you if I just kind of switch over to a couple questions I have for you around beauty?
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: Okay, awesome. So, the first question is, how do you personally define beauty?
Julia: This was a fun question for me to think about, and kind of a hard question, because I think beauty has so many definitions. It's a very deep word, with a lot of depth. So, it was fun to think about, and I know that I won't do it justice with any sort of definition that I give it, but since I have to give it a definition, I think beauty is, to me, bravery and waking up on the bright side of hope. I have a tattoo, and it says Spei Captiva Sum, which is Latin, and it means, “I am a captive of hope.”
I think for me, lots of times, the choice I get to make is which side of hope am I going to wake up on this morning, which side of hope am I going to ... because I feel like a captive of hope, that every morning essentially, hope has this grasp on me, but I get to choose which side wins.
So, am I going to wake up saying, “nothing is going right, this world is so depressing, why am I not making more progress, why is there this pain and suffering, why this, why that?” Or am I going to get up on the side that says, “I know there won't be reconciliation for some of these things on this side of eternity, but thank you, God, for the ways that you're furthering your kingdom today, in this small way. Thank you for these small steps of freedom and reconciliation and victory that I'm seeing in the women that we work with in After Hours. Thanks for the sunshine and the fresh air and thanks for clean water and access to education.”
I think it takes a lot of bravery to choose hope and to remain confident that God's kingdom is advancing, and that who you are matters, and what you do matters. You matter. You are making a difference, so get up and do it again tomorrow.
When the women in After Hours that I work with believe that, have the bravery to believe that, to me, that's beauty.
Melissa: That's incredible. I love that. Thank you so much. So you kind of already spoke to this next question, but I don't know if anything else comes up for you around the question of where do you see beauty in the world. You mentioned bravery and choosing that side of hope that believes that you are making a difference, but is there anything else that you wanted to mention around places that you see beauty emerging in the world?
Julia: I think tied alongside that is, for me, fragile moments of utter vulnerability.
I'm blown away when the women that we talk to out on the streets are willing to share just a little bit of their life and their story and their pain. What a huge gift that I've done nothing to deserve.
Their pain and hope and bravery are just so beautiful to me, and it's a beautiful moment that's created there, to step into that raw hope with her, of believing what could be, even though that utter vulnerability of putting it out there, knowing very much that her spirit could be just crushed when it fails or when it doesn't come to be.
To me, the willingness to have that kind of vulnerability with someone else, to create that kind of connection, and to bring someone else into your story like that, is a beautiful thing.
It's one thing [for me] to carry, to wake up on the bright side of hope in the morning, but just to keep that in my heart, selfishly all on my own. But when you're courageous enough to share that with another person in that kind of brave vulnerability, I don't think we do that often enough, and that's a beautiful thing.
Melissa: Yeah. No, thank you. Just the vulnerability that is in hope, too, I think, yeah, like you said, there's that connection there too.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: To be brave enough to hope.
So, the next question, then, is about brokenness. It could be about a present brokenness you're experiencing, or maybe a situation of brokenness you've experienced in the past. I don't know if anything in particular comes to mind around that question for you.
Julia: I think I've had some health problems that I've dealt with throughout my journey, and have certainly dealt with quite significant headaches and fatigue. I'm much luckier than most. My health problems could be much worse, but I think…every time I watch Parks and Recreation, I feel like my inner spirit is a Leslie Knope, but then I just get tired when I watch her, knowing that I would never have that much strength and physical energy. Then sometimes that makes me sad, because I feel like there's so much more that I could do, especially with After Hours and stuff like that, if I had more energy.
But, I know that I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, and I'm made in the way that God intended for the purposes that he placed in my life and he's called me to, and I don't have to be Leslie Knope. We don't need to ... Also, she's fictional.
I also think, especially in the line of work like After Hours, I've dealt with a lot of vicarious trauma, and while it's not trauma that's happened directly to me, it's caused a great deal of brokenness in me, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So, that's manifest in burnout and stress and nightmares and depression and anxiety, headaches, withdrawing, the list could go on.
If I don't have really good, strict boundaries and spiritual practices in place, it's a struggle to engage in this work on a consistent basis in a healthy way for me.
Melissa: Thank you for sharing that. By the way, I know sometimes, like you said, vulnerability is brave, and so sharing a bit of our brokenness can be a vulnerable thing.
So, when I ask the next question, I never want it to sound minimizing of the brokenness that you just described, but I do think that one of the challenges to seeing beauty in the world is also the reality of brokenness in our midst. So, what I'm curious to know is in the midst of the brokenness you just talked about, have you seen beauty breaking in at any point?
Julia: Absolutely. I think it's kind of what you just mentioned, and then back to what I mentioned earlier.
For me, a sign of beauty is fragile moments of utter vulnerability. Then, to me, experiencing beauty in the midst of brokenness comes in the form of community.
I'm not always good at that, because it's very tempting to put on a mask of strength, and “I'm fine,” or to just withdraw, because that's easier. It's not easy to step into what feels like soul crushing vulnerability and let a community know how much I'm struggling or the help that I need.
But the beauty that you can see when you allow others to love you and care for you or just simply be present with you is incredible.
I think a lot of us, especially us in helping professions, we think that we always are supposed to be the strong ones. I'm supposed to be the one helping others, not them helping me.
I think some of the greatest moments of beauty have come from moments actually out on the street doing ministry with the women, offering them prayer, praying for them; like in a moment of vulnerability where they're sharing just some of the worst things I have ever heard a human go through, and praying for them, and them not let going of my hand and saying, "But I want to pray for you."
Then the Spirit just leading them to pray for some things that were on my heart that I hadn't been vulnerable enough to share, but God knew, the Spirit knew, and led this woman that I thought I was ministering to, to just pour into me a thousand fold.
So, it's this slow chipping away of healing and beauty comes from this community and this willingness to be vulnerable and to allow other people to care for you and to be a ministry of presence to you. You don't always have to be the strong one.
Melissa: Yes. Yeah, no, thank you for saying that. I think it's so true, especially with what you said, with the helping profession. And I don't know where we get that, where we feel like we don't need spaces to be broken and vulnerable ourselves, so that's ... yes, that's such an important point that I think I could hear all day or be reminded of all day. Thank you.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: So, the next question is about lies about beauty. I'm just curious, for you specifically, what kind of lies have you experienced about beauty?
Julia: Where do you begin with that one? A lot, right?
Melissa: Yeah, right.
Julia: This one drives my husband crazy.
I think what I've believed is super common, at least, and the main one I think is that beauty equals the physical, and that's what a lot of us believe. I'm not thin enough. I don't dress the right way. I don't have the right makeup. My eyebrows aren't plucked the right way. My teeth aren't straight enough, or white enough. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.
Beauty is this invisible standard out there, and you're not sure where it's written. Actually, it might not be written anywhere, but you know it when you see it, and unfortunately, you don't ever see it when you look in the mirror. But all these other things you do so well in life and in ministry and in career and in relationships. Those things don't count. It's this just ... I don't know.
I don't know where we get it from, and I don't know why all of us somehow have believed the same script, but that's the lie I was fed, and I fell into, and it's been a life-long journey of rewriting the script.
Melissa: Yes. Thank you for saying all of those things. It's interesting, because I think as much as we all swim in the same water of these lies, I think there can be power in naming them and being like, “yes, we all have noticed this.” Also just naming the unhelpfulness of it, so thank you for naming those things. It's so true.
So, in the midst of that, then, so, have you had any experiences that have transformed your ideas about beauty?
Julia: Honestly, I think a big one was my marriage. I don't think I had ever really felt as securely or unconditionally loved as I had before I stepped into marriage. It was a strange feeling at first.
I thankfully actually do come from a very amazing family home and life growing up. I had very supportive parents and siblings, but I think I always had this strange script or assumption going on in my mind that they had to love me and tell me I was wonderful and gifted and beautiful because I was a part of the family unit and they had no choice. I don't know and maybe it wasn't true.
But to meet this total stranger who had no reason to care for me or think anything good of me or love me, and then they decide to commit their life to me, that is crazy.
The things he sees in me and calls out of me, the leadership and love of others, tenderness, vulnerability ... He'll comment on physical beauty, but when he chooses to say that I'm beautiful, quite often it is things that I did not equate with beauty, such as vulnerability and bravery and tenderness. So, I think it's changed the way that I look at myself and how I define the beauty that I see in myself and in others, and helps me look at beauty with different eyes.
Melissa: That sense of being loved, or unconditionally, it sounds like that's been transformational.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
Julia: It’s weird.
Melissa: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The difference, too, between your family origin and then a partner. Yeah, they're really choosing you.
Julia: Yeah.
Melissa: Thank you. Your thoughts are like amazing, and hearing about your ministry with women, and so for me, I'm hearing where God shows up in the midst of that ministry, in these dark, dark places. It's feeding my hope today, so thank you for sharing those stories, and also, just thank you for the work that you do.
Julia: Yeah. And I love this series that you are doing, and I'm grateful for you taking the time to put your resources into getting this message out there, because I think there are a lot of young men and women who need to redefine beauty or need to have the script rewritten for them. So, thank you.
Melissa: Yeah. No, thank you for saying that. Thank you for taking the time to do this, and all the other work.
Julia: Yeah, it was good to see your face and talk to you for a little bit.
Melissa: Yes. Thank you. You too.
Julia: All right. Good to see you, girl.
Melissa: Yes.
Julia: Have a great day.
Melissa: Thank you, you too. Thanks so much.
Julia: All right.
Melissa: Okay.
Julia: Bye.
Melissa: Bye.
Photo credit: Rebecca Wynia
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