Natalie Grant freaked out when the skin around her daughter's mouth turned blue.
"She can't breathe!" Grant screamed before rushing her husband and 8-year-old Gracie into the car.
Emergency room nurses took the girl's vitals and, suddenly, five doctors came running to get Gracie to take her to a back room.
"That's when I started to cry and to panic. Oh my gosh, she's really in a bad way," Grant said, voice catching.
PHOTOS: Natalie Grant
The girl nearly died from complications from her asthma during Christmas break a few weeks ago. And Grant – a Christian music star who's always transparent with fans on social media – posted every development on Facebook.
The online support exploded: The posts got millions of views, hundreds of thousands of comments and tens of thousands of shares.
"I have all these people who would pray for my kid. I honestly didn't expect it to be what it was. It was literally a worldwide prayer chain," she said.
"I'm reading these comments and it gave us a ton of strength."
Grant first noticed something was wrong on Christmas day at her parents' house in Seattle where more than 30 relatives had gathered.
Grant told her daughters to stand in front of the Christmas tree for a picture, but Gracie wasn't smiling.
"She was like, ‘I'm trying but it's kind of hard to breathe."
The next day, Gracie's breathing was labored, and mom started counting the girl's breaths. The number was twice as high as the usual 18-22 breaths per minute for children.
They went to the ER, where a physician's assistant and a nurse said Gracie had pneumonia, gave her a breathing treatment and some drugs, and sent the girl home.
It was the next day that part of Gracie's face turned blue.
The girl ended up in a pediatric intensive care unit. One lung had collapsed, the other was at only 50 percent capacity. She couldn't talk, and the few times she could, Gracie could say only one syllable at a time.
On a scale of 0 to 12, with 0 being healthy, Gracie's problems were at an 11, doctors told her parents.
"I'm panicking," Grant said. "I'd leave the room, cry my eyes out and come back and hold her hand."
Grant did the only thing she knew to do: She climbed into her daughter's hospital bed, put her hands on her daughter and prayed. Grant's husband snapped a pic on his phone.
That picture got more than 8 million views on Facebook.
Grant said she made a decision early in her career to be transparent on social media as a way to have real connection with fans.
"For me, instead of showing them my airbrushed pictures and telling them how well this single is doing on radio," she said, "I could either do that or build a community of people who really know who I am."
Grant stuck with that decision, even when her daughter was fighting for life.
She said she didn't do that for attention or validation: "I was a mom who was panicking and really desperate to have people pray for my kid."
From there, Grant kept posting updates, and one night, she told friends and fans online that she wanted them to pray for Gracie's low oxygen levels – at 80 percent -- to increase.
Overnight, it climbed to 100 percent.
"That morning she woke up and she was eating a real meal and talking and giggling and wanting to play games," Grant said. "She just seemed like Gracie."
A few days later, balloons tied to the back of her wheelchair, the smiling girl headed home.
On the way, the girl and her parents passed a holding room where 25 people were crying, sobbing and screaming. Some of them were on the ground, wailing.
Those people, all related, had just been told one of their children had died.
"For the rest of my life," Grant said, voice breaking, "I'll never forget that image."
Stunned, in tears, Gracie and her parents sat quietly in their car outside the hospital.
Gracie's dad broke the silence.
"We need to pray for that family," he said, "and also thank God our little girl is in our backseat."
