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Chapter 55<br />
JULIA IS SAVED! HALLELUJAH!<br />
Jesus told me I need to pray for you,” the Spanish lady said as she placed her coffee cup on the<br />
table next to a slew of images of mostly naked women. “So I’ve been praying for you—just as<br />
Jesus told me to.”<br />
Julia looked back at the lady and began to weep. A stream of black mascara flowed down her<br />
cheeks as she buried her face in her hands.<br />
To anyone who hadn’t seen her in a while, Julia appeared much thinner than usual, and her eyes<br />
were welted with worry. Life hadn’t been easy over the past year. First there was the depression, and<br />
the alcohol. Then came the older man with money who could protect her. He liked skinny girls, so<br />
Julia became skinnier, developing an eating disorder to placate her new boyfriend. Then it became<br />
apparent that the protector had a drinking problem. Before long he threw her against a wall in one of<br />
his drunken rages.<br />
Soon afterward a Spanish woman stopped by Julia’s studio to pick up some books, then<br />
explained why she was really there. “Jesus told me I need to pray for you.”<br />
Julia wept.<br />
Her life goals were not that far-fetched. Julia hadn’t wanted to change the world; she had just<br />
wanted her world to be changed. Was it so difficult to find a good man to marry, who would give her<br />
a child or two, a white picket fence, and, most important, see that those children grew up differently<br />
from how she had? There was a dream in her mind where that good man was Ross Ulbricht, and it<br />
ended with them both living happily ever after.<br />
Sadly, that fairy tale had never materialized.<br />
After the Spanish woman who knew Jesus arrived at her studio, the kind lady invited Julia to<br />
church.<br />
Later that morning Julia sat at the back of the congregation and heard angels in her ears. She was<br />
mesmerized by the place. The rays of light streaming in through the windows, the answers everyone<br />
else seemed to have. The pews in the church were filled with Bibles, and the people who read them<br />
sang hymns about the Lord. As she listened to the messages from the church’s preacher, Julia felt like<br />
this could be her white picket fence, that Jesus could be that good man she had always been looking<br />
for. That afternoon she canceled her client meetings and went back to the church again.
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