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with Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
Special Guest Joan Trimble
(M) We’re here today for the third episode. And I have with me Joan Trimble, whose part of our family, Body of Christ. And the last podcast, we were, John and I were discussing the captured heart, and it was very difficult to explain that concept. So we had a night watch on New Years Eve, and Joan came, and I was still sharing about the heart. I’m just consumed with that subject right now. And Joan had a personal story. She knew nothing about the pod-cast on the captured heart. And the Holy Spirit was moving in her life in concert with us, even though she didn’t know the subject. So she had an experience in her life of her heart being captured, and it was so clear and such a good illustration; and I’ve asked Joan to share, and she is most willing to do that. So Joan, welcome. I’ve know known you for thirty-five years now.
(Joan) Thirty-seven.
(M) That long? Wonderful years, and loved you that long. And you’ve endured me. And, just start to tell us about your experience as a child.
(Joan) Well I came into an adopted family, as the only child. And much wished for a child, they had longed for a child. My Mother was 40, and my Daddy was 44 when they finally were able to adopt me. And actually they loved me very, very much. But right after I basically came to the family, my Mother got very ill. And it was life threatening. But she came from a very strong family, supposed strong family; she had three sisters, and two brothers, who were like glue to each other. And they loved each other very much. They were so much into each other’s lives that it was kind of strange. Everybody knew everything and knew about everything. All of the holidays were the whole family together. I had, her youngest sister, my Mother was next to the youngest. She had a sister who had moved out of state, she’d moved to Cleveland, and then on to Detroit Michigan, who had four boys, and she desperately wanted a girl. So when I came along, six years after her youngest son, she named me and immediately sort of claimed me as ‘hers’. My aunt was here most of the time. So all holidays, we’d go to Michigan and they’d come to Atlanta, that kind of thing. We were very, very much a part of each other’s lives. It went on and on and on I guess..
(M) I’ve heard you talk about Aunt since I’ve known you, how much you loved her.
(Joan) I did, I loved her very dearly, but I clearly remember the day I was captured, and that’s what I shared with you, and with the group. I can remember as a little child, maybe three, maybe not quite four, I was sitting in her lap in the dining room. And she had cut a fried bologna sandwich of all things in about six pieces, just bite size pieces, and she would hold me and feed me each little piece, and make a little funny thing about each bite, and oh how much you like this sandwich. And she captured me. It was like a tsunami hit me as a child, and from that moment, from that sandwich on, I was totally in love, and enthralled with her. And there was nobody else on the face of the earth but her. All my thoughts were in Michigan, when she wasn’t with me. When she was with me I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. I was always under her skirts, wanting her to hold me, wanting her to love me, wanting her to kiss me, wanting her to listen to me, which she did so well. She took everything I said straight to heart and made me feel so important; that I was the center of her universe, although I wasn’t because she had another family. And then she’d leave and I’d be completely heart-broken because she’d gone home. And it was so bad that I completely ignored my own Mother. I didn’t have much of a heart for her at all. And we didn’t understand each other. And she was ill, and that made it even worse. And she felt basically totally a failure as a Mother, and I remember her saying she had completely failed me before she died; and she had not failed me. But in her mind she had, because we weren’t together.
(M) You weren&ssquo;t connected.
(Joan) We weren’t connected at all. And I realize now my connection was with my Aunt, her younger sister. And how captured I was, and how captured her sons are now to that same type evil. It’s just evil.
(M) And she recently passed away, so you’ve been on this.
(Joan) Yes, and I’ve prayed, I was interceding for her, she was on her death bed, and knew it was imminent, within a few days; and the Lord gave me some intercession for her to repent and get right with Him, before she had to meet Him. And as I prayed, and then that night, the evil was kind of revealed to me; how evil that capture was. Because I hadn’t really been onto that capturing, because the heart is desperately evil and I had not given it totally to the Lord. And I didn’t know where to go with that, I didn’t understand what had so captured me that I couldn’t give my heart to the Lord. And I really feel like it was this. And I was not free, my heart was not free to give, my heart was hers. And until I broke that and gave that to the Lord and repented of the capture, that even as a child I was willing to be captured. I was willing, I took it with open arms and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and she ate me alive, basically.
(M) What does she promise you Joan, you said that you felt like you were the center of her world?
(Joan) Right. She made me feel so important, but the key is it made me worse, instead of making feel important, when she left, I was completely devastated. Because really, I wasn’t the most important thing, she was. She was the most important thing, and when she left, there was nothing left of me; because she had devoured me, and there was nothing left.
(M) So she really wasn’t serving you, she was owning you?
(Joan) She was owning me, and had captured me.
(M) What happened to as a result of that?
(Joan) It paralyzed my heart, in all my relationships. I was always looking for her. Somewhere down the road I would look in other people, in other relationships, but the Lord kept bringing me back to the original capture. That yes, you have gone off with other people, you have sinned, you have really sinned, and had some idols of other people; but the central idol, was her. That was the same sin, it was the same capture really it was to her, not to anyone else. And He so graciously revealed it.
(M) He orchestrated it so that you see.
(Joan) At the right time, when I could see it, when I could fully say; because it’s difficult to admit that someone that you thought was a Proverbs 31 woman, was very evil. But I could never, even though I admired her, I could never be like her. I couldn’t do the things necessarily, I wasn’t the homemaker she was, I wasn’t the cook she was, she was a fantastic cook, and I’ve gotten many of her recipes. But she didn’t really teach me and instill in me her good qualities; quite the opposite, they weren’t good qualities at all; she didn’t build into me she took from me.
(M) Wow. That’s the capture of the heart. When you own someone for your own benefit. The ego, do you think it was in her ego? What did she want from you?
(Joan) She wanted me to worship her. She wanted my worship. And instead of fulfilling, when you worship God, He comes in and He fills you, but when you worship a person you go out to that person.
(M) Nothing you can return.
(Joan) Nothing in return. It’s death.
(M) So this has been a block all your life.
(Joan) I’m afraid so, and I’m just beginning to wake up. I feel alive again, I feel ok, ok I’m a person I’ve been made a person. I know I’m in the grave with Jesus, but there’s a person here that He created. I was born again to, in Christ, and now its come alive again. And I can be with Him, and I can have fellowship with Him now, on another level.
(M) So how did you take your heart back?
(Joan) I made a strong statement, ‘I belong to God’; ‘I don’t belong to man, I don’t belong to my parents, I don’t belong to my employer, I don’t belong to anybody’; I don’t belong to ‘me’; ‘I belong to God’, over and over again.
(M) Wonderful. Really, it took.
(Joan) Yes, with all my being I belong to God. And that’s the truth, and when I said the truth, then you’re free.
(M) So it was broken. Do you think behind it was some kind of demonic spell?
(Joan) I do, I do, and it’s a spell. It’s a spell, because when you get hit with it you can feel it even on your physical body. It’s a hit.
(M) A tsunami. A force.
(Joan) Yeah, it’s a force, like a big wall of water has hit you, and you’re dazed and your overwhelmed, kind of drowning in it. And you hardly know what hit you, but when you get up, all of a sudden, your whole life is focused on somebody that it shouldn’t even be focused on. And you don’t know how to get out of it, and you don’t know where it came from. And it’s just plain evil. But I see, I have separated the evil, the Aunt was a human being, this was more than a human being this was a demonic force she allowed to use her. So it wasn’t her.
(M) So she not only stole you from you, she stole your heart from your Mother.
(Joan) Right, Because God put me in that family. And she had four sons, and my Mother only had one daughter that she loved. From that time on my Mother couldn’t do anything right in my eyes. She couldn’t, even though she cooked just as well as Aunt, she didn’t have that special whatever. She wasn’t quite as refined. My aunt was a very refined southern belle. My Mother was a much more practical person. She’s the one that could drive; Aunt was the type person that didn’t drive, she wanted everybody to look after her. And she was very irresponsible, and a lot of southern woman were; she just fell right into that, and she wanted everyone to cater to her. My Mother wasn’t that way; she was the one who did everything for everybody else. And I didn’t appreciate that in her. I wanted her to be a little more sophisticated, but she was a worker.
(M) Which what you learn is superior.
(Joan) Yes, she was the one that did the driving, and the figuring out. She was very smart, even in her illness, she was ill for many years before she died; she still continued that until she did die.
(M) Joan, you have a daughter, how do you think this affected your daughter? Did it come down in anyway to her?
(Joan) Yes. It did. In fact I didn’t realize it, until I told my daughter about Aunts death, and she said similar things that I did. She said, you know Mom, when I came home, because I’ve worked, I wasn’t there when they came home, but Aunt stayed with us, and anyway she came and stayed in my home with me, and she was home when they came home. And she said when I get home from school, she’d take me in the bedroom, and wrap her arms around me and look at me and say “now tell me all about your day”. And at that moment she made me feel so special, and she really wanted to know all about my day. But then we realized we didn’t know one thing about her. She wanted to know everything about our lives, and about her day, but she never shared with us about her own life. And she was a mystery to us.
(M) So she didn’t open her heart to you, but she demanded that you open yours to her. (Joan) It was so subtle; that you didn’t realize it was a demand.
(M) You thought she was interested.
(Joan) Yeah. We thought she was interested. And she knew everything about our whole day. I came home, and I’m rushing around trying to get dinner, and I didn’t give as much attention. And we were close, but that stuck, and it was so amazing to me that that’s the way she remembered.
(M) Do you think she tried to capture (you daughters) heart?
(Joan) I do. But it didn’t work, because she had a very godly Grandma, which really brought wholeness to her life, on her Daddy’s side. So she had other woman figures in her life. And who weren’t sick, because my Mother was very ill, although she did a lot, there was still, she withdrew, she withdrew from me. This particular message I think is so important because there are so many men and women that are caught in this and don’t even know it, don’t know they’re caught. If you would’ve asked me last year if I were caught I would have said no, I’m not caught. When there were symptoms there all through my life, but I didn’t connect the dots.
(M) So her relationships were all to be adored? Be admired?
(Joan) And worshipped, and thought well of; she did it through food, and she did it through kindness, she did it through phone calls. She was the person that called the sick, the people that needed something, she’d be right there on the phone and she’d be the first one. Looking back on it she didn’t have any friends. She didn’t have any relationships. There was no one in her life.
(M) That’s amazing to have so many acquaintances, but no relationships.
(Joan)No friends. No relationships. They didn’t entertain, they didn’t have people in for meals; she basically lived in her own world. I really believe she lived in lala land somewhere. If there were problems in her sons she didn’t address the problems because she never confronted anything. And so it was almost like a Scarlet O’Hara and she was, well worry about that tomorrow.
(M) And she didn’t face life.
(Joan) No, she did not face life…I don’t think ever. And in the end she got Alzheimers, and then she really didn’t face life.
(M) Joan, can you look back and see that God was breaking this up through a process of time? Or is it recent?
(Joan) I think He probably would have broken this up a long time ago had I been willing to take a good hard look at it. But I have always felt likeI needed a Mother, somewhere I needed a Mother…….and I was really pretty mad at Him because I didn’t have anyone. I was really mad because I can remember when my Mother died, and I wanted to go live in Michigan with her. And she said no. And she’s told me that my Daddy needed me, I needed to go back home. But later she told my husband that she really wouldn’t have taken me.
(M) That’s interesting.
(Joan) It was interesting, because I thought all those years she would.
(M) She really wanted you.
(Joan) I thought she really wanted me, but when it came right down to taking another child, she said no. And I was shocked and I was an adult. It completely shocked me that she would say that. And that was probably Gods wake up call; this woman is not who you think. I think He just had to take me through some waters before I could see.
(M) But I wonder how many people in this world never have the recovery of their heart through Gods orchestration of events.
(Joan) You know I’m convinced she was captured herself, probably through my Grandmother who I never met. Because I said what was my Grandmother really like? She died in the thirties. They said, if you look at your Aunt, that’s who she was. She looked like her. You could never find anyone who would say a bad word about her, because she never confronted anyone. So you could never get mad at her because she’d never do anything to make you mad. So apparently it came down in the generations. I can’t confirm that, but that’s what I was told. I’m very concerned about her sons, because they are very captured, and still walk around worshipping her.
(M)Worshipping her?
(J)Either in rebellion, or in illness, or in divorce, or married to somebody that’s two times divorce.
(M) Well Joan, since we’re going to get into this family, you told me that one of the sons had a wife who divorced him because she said he and his Mother had a secret world. (Joan) Right. A secret relationship. After her husband died, this son told his Dad, on his deathbed, don’t worry about Mom I’ll take care of her. And so he moved in, and he was her favorite son and she captured him really even more after his Dad died, because he moved into that. And she would over-hear him on the phone telling his Mother things and he wouldn’t tell her and she realized what a relationship this was. And she said you can’t have a relationship with your Mother like that, you’re married to me. And this relationship is completely wrong, this is inordinate affection. And she called his hand on it, and it went from bad to worse, and she’s not innocent either. But they ended up divorcing. She left him.
(M) So there’s a huge trail of destruction of lives because of that extreme selfishness. (Joan) Right, and lies, I see so many lies in it. When if the truth were just told, this whole thing could have been cleared up.
(M) And I have a little saying ‘deliver me from sweet, sweet people’. Because usually it’s deceptive, charm is deceitful. And it’s meant to deceive.
(Joan) Isn’t there a scripture that says food is deceitful?
(M) If you eat the food of a stingy man, yeah.
(Joan) And she captured me with food. She captured her sons with food. She was a great cook. She got up every…when her son was in college, her had to be at his college, first class was at seven o’clock, she would be up before he left and packd him a humongous lunch, feed him breakfast, pack him a huge lunch in time for him to leave. She’d be up before dawn, and make eggs and bacon, and she had three sandwiches and some yogurt and a piece of pie, every day.
(M) And that to him was her commitment, her love.
(Joan) That to him was love. Did she ever confront him? Did she ever nurture him? Maybe she did, but I don’t see it. Did she teach him to be a man? Did she tell him this is right.
(M) This is integrity, this character.
(Joan) This is truth.
(M) This is responsibility. Joan, when you’ve told me this story, it seemed like the whole thing is about irresponsibility. That she didn’t assume the right responsibility toward you, and that she didn’t assume responsibility for her own life, but gathered servants around her. So I really believe responsibility is where we get reality, where we meet God, and the finding out of what is my real responsibility in each persons life. What is my God given responsibility and what is not my responsibility is a tremendous work, basic work that we have to do in life. And I thank you for being so honest because to me it was a vivid illustration of how a parent figure, an older figure can capture a child’s heart by making a promise that is never kept.
(Joan) It’s a lie.
(M) Yeah. And the destruction, it boils down to a lie. So I know that Joan’s heart is for this story to help others see where their heart has been captured and to know. And Joan’s assumed responsibility, which is one way of coming out of it, is that you assume responsibility for letting her have the heart that she didn’t have a right to have. And even though you were a child, you had a choice.
(Joan) Right. And I bought into how miserable it made me as a child. I would moan and cry and sit on my bed. It never occurred to me that this is wrong. Surely I knew I had to know, even as a young child. Other people aren’t moaning because they’re not…Well I take that back, my Aunt had a hold on her sister too, so I had help, I had help….there were others moaning that their baby sister was gone. And these people back in the 50’s wrote and called each other many times, at least once a week, if not more than that. And we flew up there all the time, and they came back. It was as though, well, at the funeral they said when she was far away from her loving family, how hard that was on her. If that was hard on her, she didn’t say so. But my family that was left here, it was very hard on and they let us know it. We talked about her, wonder what she’s doing, what do you think she’s doing now? Do you think she’s with her family? What do you think they’re doing? Oh let’s just call them and ask them, and we’d call and ask. But I don’t remember that necessarily being true and loving, but she was here a lot.
(M) So you see it as an abnormal enmeshment kind of.
(Joan) Yeah, It’s not a normal family relationship. Because you leave your family, you leave the nest.
(M) I was thinking today about, in the last podcast we talked about Peter, and his open fascination with the Lord, his following, and just so simple it occurred to me, he left everything to follow the Lord. He obviously left a wife. He left a business, left a family, and it’s one thing to geographically leave, but it’s another to take your heart and leave those who hold your heart, and give that fully to the Lord. But He requires that absolute surrender of the heart, doesn’t He? Thank you so much Joan. God bless you for sharing this very private freedom that God has given you, to reclaim your heart for Him. We look forward to seeing what that’s going to look like in you.
(J)I can’t wait.
