Last winter, during the last Christmas break of my college career, I was at a conference with my church. We did a lot of singing, and there’s one song about how Jesus’ love takes my breath away. I thought to myself, “Gee, Lord, I don’t really know what that’s like. I love you more than anything, but you’ve never really done anything to take my breath away before.”

A couple months after the conference, life was back in full swing. Overwhelmed with my last semester of school plus work and church (though not necessarily in that order), I let life get the best of me and I was really struggling to keep my sanity in the flurry of activity.

Then, I suddenly started having trouble breathing. I’ve never had asthma, and it was the middle of February, so it wasn’t allergies. It got so bad one night that I left my job and went to the emergency room because I could not take a full breath and I thought I was going to pass out on the concrete at Home Depot. Even after four hours of waiting and a lung x-ray, the doctor chalked it up as a cold and couldn’t really tell me a thing.

But as I was slathering myself in Vicks much later that night—it hit me. I remembered what I had thought back at the conference. And God was like, “Ask and you shall receive!”

He really gets my sense of humor. And the lyrics to “Beauty of the Lord” will never be quite the same to me again.