When living in a small town is the only thing you know, you know that everyone usually knows everybody, and if something happens, everyone is affected in some way, shape or form.

It’s something we take for granted more than we realize.

Over the past few weeks, the small town of Inman has been knocked down continuously with the losses of two people that others knew and loved.

The news spread fast, but the love that was overflowing spread faster.

See, because in a small town, we support each other, and we come together in times of happiness, but also in times of tragedy.

The closest thing I could compare it to, pardon the cliche, is one big family.

In a small community, you love each other and you support each other.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen our small town come together as one and support the family and friends of the sweet lives lost.

The great thing about living in such a tight-knit community is that no matter what happens, we are always surrounded by people willing to help, willing to love and willing to take a stand to make things right.

We support and we care.

I am truly amazed at the amount of love that has been spread over the past few weeks.

Many lessons have been learned.

I think the main one being how quickly life can be taken away.

We never expected to lose two people who were so well-known.

We never expected to have to go through the pain of seeing families broken, friendships lost or the rewind of memories some are still replaying in their heads.

We take life for granted so much more than we should.

It’s so important that you live life to the fullest, never hold back from expressing how you feel, constantly remind the ones you love how much you love them and always say sorry and forgive because tomorrow is never promised.

As a community, we lost two people who impacted so many lives.

We lost people who were so loved, cared about and will never be forgotten.

As a community, though, we gained strength to overcome battles life throws are way. We gained lessons that sadly, we couldn’t learn in a different way. We gained hope that in hard times, we can still push through.

Most of all, though, we gained two angels that now watch over our big family every single day.