Reflect, renew, at free Davenport retreat

Discover a rejuvenated version of yourself in 2024 at a free retreat

The holidays are supposed to be a joyous time, but they also can be overloaded with obligations, high expectations, financial pressures, loneliness and stress, a news release says.

To help reorient and bring forth a rejuvenated you in the new year, the Spiritual Growth Mission at Grace Lutheran Church invites Quad City residents to “Reflect … Release … Renew” at a free retreat from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Jan. 27, at Grace Lutheran Church in Pat Bell Hall, 1140 E. High St., Davenport. Refreshments will be served.

Featured speaker will be Chris McCormick Pries, board-certified advanced registered nurse practitioner (ARNP) with the Vera French Community Mental Health Center in Davenport for 45 years. She served as its clinical director until her semi-retirement in 2020. Since then, she has continued her work at Vera French on a part-time basis, seeing patients and mentoring graduate students in psychiatric/mental health nursing.

She is also is active in the community, including serving as the chairperson of the Diocese of Davenport Sexual Abuse Review Board, as a parish nurse at St. John Vianney in Bettendorf, as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Iowa School of Nursing and preceptor to physician assistant students at St. Ambrose University.

During the holidays, “We can deplete ourselves of energy, focus and purpose,” McCormick Pries said. “We give to everyone else but ourselves. As we move into the new year, it becomes important to pause, take an opportunity to replenish ourselves and then move through the five important stages that can reshape what we are doing and how we are thinking.”

Those five stages are replenishing, reflecting, refocusing, recommitting and rejoicing.

McCormick Pries will take participants on a deep dive into each stage and offer practical ways to fully implement them in their lives. The retreat will be a way for everyone to “give a gift to ourselves by looking inward, taking care of ourselves, recharging our batteries and filling ourselves with positive spiritual energy that will help carry us through the new year,” she says.

While this retreat is free to all in the community, participants are asked to register by calling Grace Lutheran Church at 563-322-0769 or visit here.

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