I realized something yesterday. I should never go to church with my sister.

I went home Saturday night to celebrate Easter with my family. We got up early Sunday morning, as we do every year, and made it to church (on time even!).

But this year, I made the mistake of sitting next to my 17-year-old sister.

Jill and I started out the service as calm, rational young women. We didn’t raise our voices, we didn’t cause any commotion — we were every mother’s dream.

That lasted about five minutes.

A little history on my family: We always get in trouble in church.

We’re always doing something to aggravate my mom, so she turns to us and gives us “The Look,” which essentially means, “Be quiet right now or you’re not getting Sunday dinner.”

Like the time my dad and I became hysterical during an Advent service. We sang this song with the line, “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” Since Christmas was approaching, and I had Christmas presents on the brain, I confused the word “presence” for “presents.”

I started laughing and told my dad, and he thought it was pretty funny. We spent some time during the service thinking of alternate words for that hymn, and we came up with, “Cast me not away from your presents, and take not your stocking stuffers from me.”

I thought it was hilarious. My mom, however, was not amused.

Yesterday, two small boys were sitting next to me and my sister. They were really cute, and every little thing they did would start us laughing.

When one of them started flying his toy dinosaur and making dinosaur noises during the sermon, Jill and I started laughing. When the other one started poking me in the side to make me laugh during some somber moment in the service, I could hardly contain myself.

Now Jill and I have a small problem: Once we start laughing, we can’t stop.

So by the time we noticed a little kid walking back from communion with his hands in the back pocket of his older brother, with his brother swatting at him and trying to shake him off, I was laughing so hard I was crying.

We got “The Look.” We got it big time.

Honestly, my memories of church have a lot to do with that kind of stuff: my sister and I tickling each other, Dad trying not to laugh while disciplining us, Mom threatening to separate us — stuff like that.

Somehow, though, in the midst of all my irreverence, I picked something up at church. Sitting there with my crazy family every Sunday, something began to sink in. It wasn’t just our family shenanigans or free doughnuts that kept me coming back to church.

It was something more.

Easter is a big time of year for church attendance. More people go to church during Easter than any other time of year, with the possible exception of Christmas. And, for many of those people, Easter is the only time of year they will deal with God.

But God is more than just a one-day-a-year deal. He’s more than a one-day-a-week kind of deal, too, which all too many “church-goers” forget.

People throughout America are looking for something, something that’s missing in their lives. Maybe they think they’ll find it inside the church on Easter morning. Or maybe they have given up on ever finding it at all.

But regardless of whether people give up on God, he never gives up on us.

I don’t often write about my faith. I usually leave that up to someone else and concentrate solely on other issues.

But as I sat in my parents’ church in Des Moines Sunday morning and reflected on what Easter means to me, I remembered that every issue I deal with is directly related to God, so if you don’t have a concept of the God I worship, you won’t understand where I’m coming from in my columns.

Students at Iowa State are looking for something to fill their lives. They inevitably recognize that void, and they’ll try to fill it with anything, from relationships to alcohol.

But I don’t need to look anymore for something to fill that hole in my life. I have a relationship with God — a God who loves me, cares for me, will get me through anything and wants to give me every good thing in life.

Experiencing God isn’t about going to church on Easter. It’s not actually about going to church at all. It’s about opening yourself to getting to know God. It’s about letting him change you and letting him fill your life.

If you’re looking for something else in your life, if you’re tired of searching for something to make you happy, start talking to God. It’s easy, and it will make your life so much better.

You’ll never have to look for something in your life again. And that’s what Easter is really about.

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Sara Ziegler is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D.