‘You’re healthy and it is good when you are thankful’

Konner Repp and his mom Jennifer have spent more than 250 days in a hospital over the last year. That is until Konner, 16, received a heart transplant June 24.

Konner lived with a single ventricle heart defect until receiving his new heart, which means one of the heart’s two pumping chambers was either underdeveloped or missing, which can lead to a reduced oxygen supply.

Though they have had a difficult journey to tred, the Repps, who live in a suburb of the Twin Cities, have learned a great deal about gratitude through it all.

They met Greenfield resident Whitney Lewis while at appointments at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and visited a Community Conversations event last Friday night at Greenfield United Methodist Church.

Birthed because of tornado recovery, Community Conversations are now held the 21st of each month to give residents a time to gather, learn and share.

“The biggest thing we came up with for gratitude is to live every day for the day that it is,” Jennifer said. “It’s about being grateful for the day and not always looking to that big picture — like for us, we were looking forward to that new heart. We got let down day after day after day and kind of stopped being grateful for the little things every single day.”

Jennifer said in a post-event interview on GUMC’s YouTube page that while their goal was to be grateful everyday, there are sometimes circumstances that derail those intentions.

“At about Day 120, when I didn’t get that call, I got more down and down and down,” Jennifer said. “I asked God ‘What if today is the best day and we’re not living there, enjoying the moment right now?’”

Despite a long stay in the hospital, the Repps looked for ways to make the most of each day and tried to show gratitude even during their stay.

“Whether it be a small thing like taking someone a coffee, bringing someone some pudding, inviting someone to pizza or making cookies for the medical staff,” Jennifer said. “Whatever it was, it’s the little things, right?”

Nodaway Valley High School’s Personal Wellness and Leadership Class, taught by Sami Britten, provided handouts for the Repps’ program and others containing information students researched and learned about gratitude.

The students listed the 4 As of gratitude (Awareness, Acknowledgement, Appreciation and Action) as well as the health benefits of gratitude. They found gratitude has been found to improve mental health by reducing anxiety and depression. Gratitude has also been found to reduce the risk of serious illness leading to death. It can increase positive emotions by as much as 25%, reduces stress by 23%, boots wellbeing by 10% and improves sleep quality by 25%.

Pastor Melinda Stonebraker commented that people oftentimes idolize the perfect life, looking for the next big thing, and then “life will be good.”

“But, what the practice of gratitude shows is that you’re healthy and it is good when you are thankful,” Stonebraker said.