There are times when, suddenly, I realize how random life can be.

And there are times when I understand that what at first looks like bad luck may (sometimes) be the best luck of all, ultimately.

Our latest experience of both of these life lessons came this week when our niece and her boyfriend were caught in a tornado in La Crosse, WI.

I won’t go into the full version, but to make a scary story short, here are key details:

– Liz and her boyfriend were caught in a car in sudden downpour, waiting for the rain to end so they could carry a few things into her apartment.

– They didn’t hear any tornado sirens or warnings in the area so they thought it was just a hard rain.

– The storm suddenly changed into something far more dangerous as the car started to rock in a rapidly gathering wind.

– The roof of a nearby apartment building tore off and started to fly through the air toward the car.

– Doing their best to survive a now terrifying situation, Liz’s boyfriend pushed her to the floor and covered her body with his, trying to protect her should the apartment roof hit the car.

– The roof flew past the car and slammed into her apartment.

– Their cars were both totaled. Her apartment was condemned.

– Liz and her boyfriend are both safe and alive.

These are some of the lessons for us from this experience:

1. Life is more random than any of us want to admit.

Liz and her boyfriend should have been in more danger in a car in a tornado than in her apartment. In this particular circumstance, however, the opposite was true.

2. Sometimes less information is better than more.

Another irony of this experience is that I saw a tornado warning on Twitter for La Crosse, WI at right about the time the tornado may have occurred.

My husband and I were on our way back from a brief trip to nearby Santa Cruz, CA. As we drove over the hill between the ocean and San Jose, I casually scrolled through my Twitter feed. I saw a few minutes’ old tornado warning for La Crosse that said, “Take cover!”

I made a quick decision that it would be more dangerous to try to text the information to Liz. I decided she’d probably heard the warning and was in a safe circumstance, and if she had not, her cell phone would be a dangerous distraction when she needed to respond to the circumstances she was in.

I realized later that if they had known they were in tornado-ripe conditions, they might have tried to move the car but ended up in the path of flying apartment roof. Or they might have tried to run for her apartment, which we now realize that, at that time, in that place, could have been one of the worst things they could have done.

3. Luck is relative.

I’ve had experiences in my life (and you probably have, too) when people said to me, “You were so lucky!” and at the time, I didn’t feel lucky it all.

Liz doesn’t feel lucky when she sees the rain pouring through the hole in the roof and the walls into her apartment, knowing that she can’t retrieve anything in that now-condemned space. And she doesn’t feel lucky when she thinks about replacing her car. But, thankfully, she had renters’ insurance which will cover the cost of replacing her apartment furnishings and clothes. And her well-cared-for used car had run long beyond when she expected it would, so she’d gotten great service from that.

Yet when she stops to realize how dangerous the situation was, she realizes how VERY lucky they are to have survived those few minutes in that specific place.

4. Suddenly, priorities become very clear…and I feel thankful.

At some point this week, my husband and I were recounting times in our lives when we, or our children, were in frightening circumstances that, thankfully, worked out so much better than they might have.

One involved a sudden ice storm and a solo driving trip that could have worked out very differently.

Another involved a simple piece of candy that a small child almost choked on, requiring a frightened 911 call and suspending him upside down to shake the candy out.

Another involved a driver in training who, almost hit by a truck pulling without warning into her lane, made the right driving decisions, showed good judgment (and nerves of steel), and saved them all from potentially serious injury.

And there have certainly been others.

We felt unlucky that each situation occurred, yet SO lucky with the way they worked out, compared to how they might have.

I realized this week that each of us…everyone…may have been in situations that could have become difficult or dangerous, yet we never realized the possibility was so close because they never quite got that far. I feel thankful they did not (And I suspect those situations almost happen more than most of us might realize, or want to know).

So.

Liz is safe.

Her boyfriend is safe.

Stuff can be replaced.

What more could we want in a week when the randomness of life became apparent again, and what looked like bad luck at first reminded us how lucky we really are?