Songfacts®:

• This is the title track from folk rock musician Jennifer Knapp's fourth album, her first studio record for nine years.
• On April 13, 2010, Knapp publicly came out as a lesbian. As her previous records had been recorded within the Christian music genre, she expected a backlash from religious fans. So for her first recording since announcing she is gay, Knapp penned a mainstream album, which did not specifically target a Christian audience. "I just wouldn't find it respectful at all to say, 'Hey, this is something that you want in your store next to your Jesus statue,'" she told Reuters. "It would just be disingenuous to try and convince someone that they needed to do that."
• Knapp explained the meaning of this song in an interview with Christianity Today: "It's basically just a struggle to hold onto the things that have been valuable to me. That was one of the last songs I wrote going into this, when I started to have a panic attack going 'I can't do this. People are going to chew me up and spit me out and tell me that I'm worthless.' I think the process of writing that song was really helpful to realize that I really enjoy what I'm doing, and I'm not going to let go of my faith and I'm not going to let go of the passion to do music the way I want, in case there are other people telling me I can do neither because of personal decisions I've made."
• During the same Christianity Today interview, Knapp was asked who is the you when she sings, "Holding onto you is a menace to my soul"? The Kansas born musician replied: "It changes nightly. It seriously does. And it can change three or four times while I'm singing it. Some days it's my faith. Some days I'm singing to God, like 'You're a menace, man. It's hard to keep my faith.' Sometimes it's music, and sometimes it's being on the road. It's a lot of those scenarios. That song is a bit of a chameleon, because it's all of those fearful moments that want to handicap me from not moving forward, when I'd rather move forward with grace and as much kindness as I can—and make my mistakes and hope that grace will follow me."