Take a load off, Southwest Virginia.

Look back over 2007 and exhale. We survived another year. It wasn't easy. It never is. But as Al Jarreau famously crooned, we got by.

Individually and collectively, we were tested.

Profits sank. Business suffered. Layoffs came.

Still, our kin, friends and co-workers summoned courage and took their first steps in unfamiliar circumstances.

We grappled with the worries of all Americans: Sky-high gas prices broke our budgets and disrupted our driving routines.

Health care concerns forced tough decisions. The housing bubble burst, and the possibility loomed of losing homes. Others couldn't get rid of them.

Statewide issues created divisions among us: Should Virginia issue a slavery apology? (We compromised.)

What about the right to light up in restaurants? (Lawmakers are weaseling on this one.) Should only select drivers pay for new roads? (Heck no.)

Don't forget about the overblown public blood-lust directed at Michael Vick and his dark hobby.

In Roanoke, the schools sagged under the weight of poor morale. But fortunately, the tide is turning back to the students.

That was the routine stuff, but 2007 was far from routine.

This year, in one horrifically defining way, was unlike any other. It tested us the way no other community has ever been tested.

On April 16, a disturbed mind orchestrated and unleashed a senseless rampage. The shooter at Virginia Tech took the lives of 32 people who became the faces of a national tragedy. It was the largest school shooting in U.S. history.

The shooting stopped when the gunman took his own life.

"Death is death," a young Tech graduate told me a day after the shooting. "But unexpected death is the hardest to deal with."

The investigations and postmortems have pointed up things that could have been done differently, handled better. Loopholes that need closing.

Proposals await the General Assembly when it convenes next month. That's as it should be. We would be remiss if we didn't learn from this tragedy.

But during those dark days in April, when Blacksburg was the epicenter of a profound sadness gripping the nation, we came together.

We comforted one another -- under the leadership of Tech President Charles Steger, who stood tall in the glaring spotlight in the days afterward.

With the camaraderie of one another, when, regardless of whether we went to school there or not, we were all Hokies. With the words of Nikki Giovanni.

"We will prevail, we will prevail.

"We are Virginia Tech."

No, 2007 wasn't easy.

But we survived it, because our faith overcame our fear.

Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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