Dealing with disappointment

Jemimah Wright (JW): You were with Hillsong in Sydney for ten years and then moved to Nashville. It was there you met your husband, can you share that story?

Mia Fieldes (MF): I thought that I would move to America, get married and get a green card, but that’s not how it went. I’d been quite disappointed in the dating experience. I think it’s easy to let your experience frame your expectation for the future. I’d said to God: “I want to trust you in this area, but I don’t know what you’re doing.” He replied: “You’re disappointed in me, you’re not just disappointed in your experience.” I was like: “No, I’m not.” But God knows us so well; he said: “No, you’re disappointed in me. So even if I did something for you, you wouldn’t be able to see it – you would just whittle it down to coincidence. I want you to know that it was me.”

So, he started healing me of disappointment. I was in church one day, and said to God: “I’m gonna keep trusting you, but I want to know what you’re doing.” And he said: “OK” and suddenly I had this vision. In the vision, I was in a massive Furniture Warehouse. I looked around and God was standing right beside me. He smiled at me and said: “You can pick anything you want.” I started walking around but deep down I did not have any peace. I finally went back to God, and I remember feeling a bit upset. I said to him: “I don’t want to do this. Nothing here feels like it’s for me. I just don’t have peace about it. I need you to pick with me.”

‘It’s easy to let your experience frame your expectation for the future’

He smiled, got down close, and said: “You know Mia, everything here is good. I’m actually the one who made all of it, but if you really want me to pick with you, I will custom make it for you.” And then he said to me: “But customised things take a little bit longer. Are you willing to be empty handed for a while longer?” I said yes, and then the vision was over. 

I then spent the next year and a half on this journey of faith, which is the evidence of things unseen. To the point where, when I couldn’t see anything, I would move in the opposite spirit. So instead of giving into sadness, I would do something in faith. Like if I was having a sad day, I would literally go to Sephora and buy the men’s cologne that I liked the best, because I thought, well, ‘this is for someone because God’s custom making it’. 

One day in church I felt God said: “It’s in the mail.” I was like: “That means my husband is on the way, excellent!” I would partner with him in random ways. For example, I heard a sermon about Jericho – what do you do when you reach a promise, but you hit a wall? You march around the wall. So I went home and marched around the mail building in my apartment complex seven times!

Then the Holy Spirit said to me: “There’s nothing else you can do now; you just need to rest in what I’ve said to you.” That night, I got an email. It said: “You probably don’t remember me, but two years ago, I was at your church and you looked at me and smiled, and I’ve remembered that ever since. I don’t live in Nashville anymore, but I would love to take you on a date.” It was from my now husband, Joren Dunnavant.

I think we went on one date, and the next day, he said: “Let’s just be in a relationship.” We got married six months later.

JW: You’ve got a beautiful baby girl, but the journey to motherhood wasn’t easy. Can you share a bit of that? 

MF: I’d had one or two health things that I thought were not a big deal, but I wanted to check them out before I got pregnant. I went to a doctor who said: “Let’s do a scan.” They did an ultrasound of my uterus, and said they’d give me the results the next day. That night, I had a dream that I was 20 weeks pregnant with twins, and one was bigger, the other smaller. I remember saying to the doctor: “Is everything OK?” and the doctor said: “Everything’s fine. You don’t have anything to worry about.” I replied: “But there’s a big twin and a small twin” and the doctor looked me in the eye, and said: “I promise you everything is going to be OK.” Then I woke up. 

Back at the doctors, they said: “Your uterus has grown to 20 weeks pregnant, and there are two tumours in there – one bigger, the other smaller.” I just straightaway knew it was what God had shown me in the dream. And so even though I had the diagnosis, I knew everything was going to be OK. 

I really didn’t have fear about it. I knew it was just something I was going to have to deal with. So I booked in with a specialist and had a C-section. I remember being disappointed, because I’d really been believing for healing all the way up until the surgery. 

I know you medically have to tell me what you’re seeing. But respectfully I still believe in miracles

God had spoken to me and said: “I’m going to take your story from a beautiful story to a miracle story.” I remember thinking: “That means I’m going to need a miracle.” 

I went into surgery, which was supposed to take two or three hours, but it took seven and a half. They basically had to chop into my uterus, and then piece it back together. They also took an ovary. They told us we had to wait six months to get pregnant, because it was such an aggressive surgery. I told them: “I’ll be back in five, because I’ll be healed in five easily.” I went back at five months, and they were shocked. They said: “We cannot even see where we cut into your uterus. There’s not even any scars there.”

We tried to get pregnant for a while. We would rev ourselves up with hope. We even had a crib set up, because we were so convinced that God was going to do this great thing for us.

So I know what it’s like to go and have a C-section and come out empty handed. Except I came out with a promise from God that he was going to give me a miracle story. 

We tried for about a year. I convinced myself every month that I was pregnant. After a year, I started feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I went back for a scan, and they said: “Your tumours have grown back. We’re going to have to go in again and do surgery.” So they did. We got to start trying again a bit sooner, because they were able to do the surgery differently this time. But it just wasn’t happening. They referred us to a fertility clinic and tried a bunch of things. Then they sat us down and said: “Look, you’re pretty much out of options.” I said: “I know you medically have to tell me what you’re seeing. But respectfully I still believe in miracles. I’m going to get pregnant.”

I called them two or three weeks later to say: “I just want let you know, I’m pregnant.” The doctor who did my surgery and who actually delivered our daughter jumped up and down. She was so excited for us. So we got this miracle pregnancy, but I remember a few people told me not to tell anyone because I might still have a miscarriage. That motivated me to tell everybody, because I wasn’t in charge of sustaining the miracle; God is in charge. 

Booth’s cord was marginal, which means that the cord is not in the centre of the placenta but on the edge. The concern is that the baby will not be getting enough nutrients and be small or underdeveloped. 

Sometimes we’re begging God to make the journey easier, but in hindsight we say thank God I got to walk through fire

I decided: “I’m not going to tell anyone, because I am not going to worry.” There was also a tumour growing in there with her, underneath the placenta, which is not a great place for the tumour to be because it can separate your placenta. Every time I felt fear, I would say out loud: “God, you gave us a miracle; you can sustain it.”

I had Booth early because they had to do a scheduled C-section, but it was the most peaceful experience. She was totally healthy. When I went for the surgery, I thought they could cut the tumour but my doctor explained: “No, we can’t, because it’s too much blood loss.”

I said to God: “Well, what do you think about that?” And he replied: “I’ll give you a double portion.” So I was waiting for my double portion on the operating table while they delivered Booth. Joren was sitting over with Booth when one of the nurses said: “Oh, my gosh, what is that?” My doctor laughed and said: “It’s a fibroid; it’s delivered itself!”

Everyone had said to me that parenting is so hard. But for me, it is so sweet. I love those sleepless nights; I treasure them because I think: “Look what God did.” I don’t think God sends us hard things on purpose. I think we live in a fallen world where God has a way of being able to take those things and work them through. If it’s not good yet, then it’s just not finished. 

JW: I’ve heard you say that in every hard thing there’s an opportunity for an upgrade. Can you share more about that? 

MF: Well, I think it comes down to what you believe about the nature of God. If you truly believe that God works all things together for good, then you will believe that there is an upgrade in every situation. I think sometimes we’re begging God to make the journey easier, but in hindsight we say thank God I got to walk through fire.

For more information about Mia and her music go to @miafieldes