Songfacts®:

• Mickey Guyton wrote this song with Karen Kosowski and Victoria Banks for the movie Breakthrough. The film tells the true story of a St. Louis teenager, John Smith, who slipped through an icy lake and had no pulse for nearly 45 minutes after he was rescued.
• Six months after Guyton had a meeting with her label telling them that she wanted to start writing for film and television, the singer got an email from them briefing her about a movie called Breakthrough. She was told they needed a song for a specific scene in which John Smith falls through ice and isn't expected to make it through the night.
  
  Guyton doesn't have any children but wondered what she would tell her child if she didn't think they were going to make it. At the time she was writing with Victoria Banks (Jessica Simpson's "Come on Over," Sara Evans' "Saints & Angels"). She asked her, "Victoria, what would you tell your daughters if you didn't think that they were gonna survive the night?" Banks replied that she would "tell them to hold on."
  
  And that's exactly where they wrote the song from. Guyton explained: "We wrote the song basically as a prayer, because when you think that someone you love isn't going to make it, the first thing you want to do is get on your knees and pray and let them know that you're here and hold on to me. And that's how it came about."
• Prior to her songwriting appointment with Karen Kosowski and Victoria Banks, Guyton had had a full-on allergic reaction to some chips and was sick for an entire day. Still feeling bad when she sat down with her co-writers, Guyton feared nothing would come out of their session, but they ended up writing the song in 30 minutes.
  
  "That allergic reaction was just like a godsend, which is crazy because the song is for a faith-based film," she told Billboard. "It just feels like God has played a part in it."