She was weary of wildfires and earthquakes. As it turned out, she had barely settled in when an onslaught of tornadoes and floods began. One tornado ripped into homes, businesses and the Catholic high school from which she had graduated, mere blocks from her childhood home. News and weather channels liked calling the severe weather catastrophic and unprecedented. She simply called it crazy-making.

When such things happen, we tend to search our souls and challenge God to explain. We can blame wars and crimes on humans. We can factor in some human misjudgments — like building on flood plains or ruining the environment — when it comes to disasters. But so many seem downright inexplicable.

Why do damaging winds and waters happen here and not there? Why does the devastation happen today and not tomorrow, when we might have had more warning? There is such a thing as survivor’s guilt. Perhaps Kathy T. would have felt it if her recently sold California home had burned down and the new owners’ possessions were now in ash. And yet she can thank God that her Indiana residence was unscathed amid the chaos.

That’s the paradox of gratitude.

I found myself grateful this past summer when my brothers and their loved ones suffered no damages as high winds and floods hit the New York and Philly areas. Did that mean that I was grateful that people in New Jersey or Philadelphia suburbs were clobbered instead? My religious community’s motherhouse lost power for three days.

Fortunately, we operate a large continuing care community that serves hundreds just down the road, so our most vulnerable sisters were transferred, with the help of a cadre of volunteers, to that facility where emergency generators continued to run. We are tremendously grateful. Does that mean that we simply shrug when we hear that several rural communities not that far from us suffered longer outages and had no alternative places for residents to go?

The question of “Why them and not us/me?” often arises when we are counting our blessings that we’ve been spared the most negative and life-threatening effects of things that happened unpredictably. Both of my parents and two uncles served in World War II. While one uncle was shipwrecked, all came home safe without the residue of what was then called “shell shock.”

But many died. Others were severely injured and rendered almost non-functional in the aftermath of war. We knew some of them, and we know some today from more recent wars. Why did they suffer grave harm and my parents and uncles came home in good health?

To be very honest, I have asked that same question of myself. When I consider the number of children and youth I know who have died young, I wonder why God has left me here with no complications after 57 years of type 1 diabetes. This is far beyond what was predicted when I took my first insulin shots in 1969. Their families were heartbroken. Mine was not.

The truth is that no matter how much we think we know, there is very little we understand about the world of nature, the vagaries of illness, human will, human destiny and the mind of God. While we prefer a straightforward, uncomplicated existence, we have a fact to face: Life is messy. All of us are inevitably affected and afflicted by ironic and paradoxical situations.

St. Thomas Aquinas verbalized an unsettling proposal in his 13th-century Summa contra Gentiles: Chance is also part of divine providence. In other words, things may sometimes go this way or that, and God’s plan goes on — almost as if a divine GPS is in constant recalculating mode. Volcanoes may or may not erupt. An unsuspecting bystander may or may not be hit by crossfire. Viruses and bacteria find homes in animals and human beings willy-nilly. Lightning strikes here but not there. Rains can come as mere sprinkles or inundate.

God is present in all of it, carrying us through. We just don’t know how it all works.

None of my musings here explain anything. But what I can suggest is that, during this season of Thanksgiving, we temper our prayers and celebrations of gratitude with an awareness of those who are not counting so many blessings this year.

We can also temper our urges to offer trite remarks about why bad things happen. We can learn to offer a modicum of help and sit quietly with those who have endured losses that haven’t been our own crosses. Many of our blessings are things that others can only wish were theirs as well. But all of us are somehow, and in some ways, blessed.