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I close my eyes, right there in the lobby, in front of a glowing screen.

Alright, God. I’m going to do this. I’m giving it my all, all six months, like I said I would.

But you know what happened last time. You know what it did to me, the last time I walked into a room like this and let people in.

Please. Please don’t let it happen again.

I open my eyes.

Then I go find the room.

The room is not what I thought it would be.

I don’t know what I pictured. Folding chairs in a tight circle. Everyone’s knees almost touching. Forced closeness where you can’t look away and can’t hide and eventually someone makes you share your life story.

This is not that. This is a classroom, and a nice one. Big and bright, with high ceilings, soft track lighting, and a wall of windows letting the morning in. Rows of real chairs, the padded kind, not a folding leg in sight. A rolling whiteboard the size of a door stands at the front, beside a projector screen glowing with the group’s name and this week’s verse. In the corner, a coffee station that could pass for a café.

Maybe forty people are already here, scattered in clusters, laughing about things that happened before I got here. Nobody looks up when I come in. Nobody hands me a name tag or a pamphlet or a look.

The relief is embarrassing.

I aim for the back row, because the back row has an exit behind it and I have never once sat in the front of anything I could avoid.

I’ve just found a chair when a voice arrives ahead of its owner.

“Oh my gosh, are you new? You’re new! I can always tell. I’m Natalie.”

She’s already sitting near me, or beside me, or possibly on top of me, I can’t fully tell. A coffee in one hand and a Bible with about nine hundred sticky tabs in the other, and she talks the way water comes out of a hose you forgot was on.

“I’ve been coming since like February, my roommate dragged me, I cried the first day, don’t worry it gets better, do you want coffee, the coffee’s bad but it’s free, oh my gosh I love your dress, is that linen? I could never, I’d look like a napkin. How long have you been coming to New Chapter?”

“I...” I get one syllable in.

“You know what, don’t answer that, weird first question.” She waves it off and keeps going.

I’ve met this kind of person in my office. The ones who fill the silence so it can’t fill them.

But she’s also, somehow, easy. She wants nothing from me but my company, and she’s decided she already has it.

A young man steps to the front, beside a whiteboard with last week’s notes half-erased on it.

“Alright, y’all. Let’s get started.”

Natalie drops into the seat beside me and pats my knee like we’ve been friends for years. “That’s Brandon, he’s great!”

“We’ll start where we always start,” Brandon says. “Prayer requests. Raise a hand, we’ve got Andrew typing them up this morning.” A guy near the front lifts his phone. “He will post them on the Facebook group.”

Hands go up around the room. A job interview. A grandmother in the hospital. Someone asks for prayer about a decision they don’t explain, and nobody makes them. The requests land soft and unhurried, people just handing each other things to hold.

Then Brandon scans the room and finds me.

“Oh, you’re new. Sorry, I didn’t see you back there. Any requests?”

I shake my head no.

“No pressure, but would you stand and tell us your name, though? We like to know who’s in the room.”

I stand. Faces turning toward me, friendly and expectant, and I smooth my skirt because my hands need a job.