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On Easter Sunday, as Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and a traditional time of renewal, the holiday takes on added importance for some Coloradans who’ve reached a crucial juncture in their spiritual lives.

One family found fulfillment in ancient tradition. A single mother found acceptance for herself and a foundation for her kids in a faith whose almost mystical attraction she never quite understood – until now. And a preacher’s wayward daughter found physical and spiritual recovery among strangers hundreds of miles from home.

They look at this important time in the Christian calendar with fresh eyes and share stories of religious rebirth that contain one common thread – a long search that ended in a joyous time of personal discovery.

Randy Sisson calls it simply “the crisis.”

On Easter morning last year, he awoke with his wife, Sonie, in their home near Evergreen and heard her ask a simple, sleepy question: “What are we going to do today?”

He could barely believe the words coming out of his mouth: “Why ruin a perfectly good Easter morning by going to church?”

The moment marked a spiritual low for the 43-year-old real estate consultant who had spent virtually all of his adult life seriously seeking God.

Sonie began to cry.

“It was Easter,” she recalls, “and I wanted to be in church. For Randy to say that, I didn’t completely understand where he was coming from. But I didn’t realize how empty I was.”

The family’s spiritual odyssey had taken them through several denominations, mega-churches and small community gatherings, and even a year away from church altogether.

It led them through religion laced – annoyingly, they thought – with pop culture until they arrived at an ancient faith deeply rooted in liturgy, ceremony and tradition: the Orthodox Christian Church.

“If a Christian from the fourth century walked into our church,” says Randy, “he’d know right where he’s at.”

After a year experiencing the Orthodox liturgical cycle, the Sissons will convert to the faith. Their two boys, 9-year-old Max and 7-year-old Blake, were scheduled to be baptized Saturday. Randy and Sonie plan to receive Chrismation, the sacrament through which they officially join the church, today.

Next Sunday they’ll celebrate Pascha, the Orthodox Christian observance of Jesus’ resurrection, which this year comes one week after most denominations celebrate Easter. Coincidentally, Pascha also marked their first experience in the Orthodox church last year, in the wake of their Easter crisis.

“We felt the joy, the life pulsing in us,” Randy says. “So here it comes again, only this time we’ll be fully in communion. If last year was joy, this year the experience will be tenfold.”

The Sissons found what they’d been seeking almost literally outside the door of their semi- secluded mountain home. Randy chatted with a neighbor who asked if he’d like to learn about the Orthodox Church.

He borrowed a few books and dug in.

At a seminar by well-known Orthodox Christian speaker Frederica Mathewes-Green, the Sissons learned about St. Luke Orthodox Christian Church in Lafayette.

Now they travel more than two hours round trip to worship where a congregation of about 265 people has made them feel as if they’ve reached the journey’s end.

They’re considering a move to be closer to the church, where they’ve found both a sense of community and a spiritual home.

Still, Randy looks back without regret at the churches that didn’t connect with his family.

“I can’t take away from the beauty of the journey,” he says.

For years, she has sensed the gentle tug of faith.

But for Shea Lewan, the gravitational pull of her wild side, her impulsive tendencies, yanked her so long and hard in the opposite direction that the thought of embracing Christianity – it embracing her back – triggered only a sarcastic reflex.

“Oh, right.”

Who’d take a single mother with three kids out of wedlock by two fathers? Someone who’d repeatedly run away from home, logged a DUI when she was 15 and done time in a juvenile facility?

It would be years before she found her answer in the Catholic Church, where today she and 9-year-old Kody, 7-year-old Miya and 2-year-old Allycia will be baptized into the faith. She’ll also be confirmed and receive her first Communion.

“The works,” says Lewan, now 28 and a nurse rearing her children in Broomfield.

But until about two years ago, her commitment to any spiritual path had been sporadic, at best.

In her rebellious youth, while in the midst of putting her parents through what she calls “holy hell,” Lewan remembers going to a Catholic church with her boyfriend’s mother and reveling in the mystery.

“I never understood why everyone would kneel, sit and stand,” she says.

But when she emerged from Mass, she felt inexplicably happy, lighter than air, unstoppable.

“I always wanted it, in my heart and in my head,” she says. “But I guess the time wasn’t right.”

About two years ago, Lewan asked if she could go to church at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Northglenn with her best friend. She enrolled her kids in religious education and, when they told her that she should attend classes, too, she agreed.

She met David Pipp, director of evangelization at the church.

“I never understood the whole Mass,” she admits, “but I thought it was so pretty. Now, I’ve learned so much.”

Still, she feared rejection – by her parents and the church. But while her parents don’t attend church regularly, they’ve supported her decision. And Pipp, who teaches the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, reminded her that “God is forgiving.”

She’s still working on her rosary – the words sometimes elude her. But finally, faith and the rest of her life have aligned in a way that excites her.

“I feel like I’ve found the right path, but the journey is just beginning,” she says. “Like it’s the end of the road – but now here’s the highway.”

Part of it was the death of her grandmother, who helped raise her, always stood up for her and even sang gospel with her. Sylki Hargrave quit caring, dived deeper into drug abuse and pulled away from everyone – God, too – when her grandmother passed.

And part of it was the yellow crime-scene tape that greeted her too many times when she returned to her Montgomery, Ala., home. Everyone in her neighborhood seemed corrupted – including Hargrave, who, at 43, felt the violence creeping too close.

“Every corner I turned, it was like hell,” says Hargrave, who had fallen away from a family of pastors and evangelists. “I had to get out. I had to go.”

She picked Denver – a place whose postcard beauty stuck in her mind, a place she’d never been, a place where she knew no one and no one knew her.

Perfect.

On March 11, she got on a bus that took her north, through St. Louis, and then west. After two days, she got off in downtown Denver and found room at the Samaritan House shelter.

A homeless man suggested she go with him to Friendship Baptist Church of Christ Jesus, a congregation of about 800.

Pastor Paul Burleson sprinted to the front of the church and boomed: “It’s time to run to Jesus! You know who you are! On your mark, get set, go!”

The words bored into her. She bolted from her seat and answered the call, as if the pastor had peeked into her soul.

“I had my mind made up,” she says now. “I needed love, to feel some peace. And when I walked into that church, I felt love. I told them everything about me, and they embraced me in love.”

She called her mother, Alice Elliott, pastor at Temple of God, Miracle of Deliverance church in Montgomery. Hargrave told her that she’d been saved and that she was finally clean from drugs.

The words had been a long time coming.

Over the years, Hargrave’s futile efforts to find herself had weighed on Elliott as well. Family friends wondered why, in such a sanctified family, a preacher couldn’t even help her own daughter find the Lord.

“Sometimes you can be too close,” says Elliott, by telephone from Alabama. “I prayed that she’d meet some people who’d really help her and give her favor, that the Lord would deliver her and set her free.”

Hargrave landed a job and enrolled in a rent-to-own program so she can save toward her own house.

But more than anything, Hargrave says, she needs to get closer to God and stay there. She feels blessed by so many people in so many ways – and so changed from the angry, detached woman of the past – that she can’t stop the tears.

“It’s because I yielded to God,” she says. “I’d been fighting that for over 20 years. I had to come 2,000 miles to find happiness. And it was right there all the time.”