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My guest this week has been on the Tonight Show countless times, on top of being featured on Nick at Night and a number of films including Mom’s Night Out. She’s my buddy, my pal… Kerri Pomarolli!
Her story is very impactful and helpful on so many levels.
But, she didn’t always aspire to merge together her comedy skills with ministry. In fact, her original personal goal was to marry her ability to make people laugh with the goal of marrying Matt Damon. And, truth be told, as she was preparing for her first appearance on the Tonight Show, who would be in the dressing room right next to Kerri? The one and only Matt Damon! Talk about an answer to prayer!! That was the day she got her very first restraining order. (apparently Matt doesn’t have the same type of prayer life as Kerri).
But, regardless of her marital status, God has been able to use her and her comedic abilities to reach the hearts of people all over the world. Kerri remembers one of the first times she was asked to speak at church – she was telling the story about her own spiritual journey in front of a very charismatic congregation and she remembers saying:
“If you want to surrender your life to Jesus, you simply need to confess your sins and pray this…
Dear Jesus (and the congregation repeated ‘Dear Jesus’)
I’ve fallen (I’ve fallen)…
…and I can’t get up!”
To this day, Kerri can’t believe that those words came out of her mouth! In fact, there may be a handful of people in Covina, CA who think they found salvation by quoting a Medical Alert commercial.
But, in all seriousness, the power of prayer to God the Creator of all things is REAL. Kerri is living proof. Now, she grew up knowing the Bible – she knew its stories, she knew God loves her, she knew that people have been healed by their faith in God. She even saw a man who was, technically, dead… be brought back to life.
So, as she looks back on her life, and sees all of her own health problems: spinal fusion surgery at eleven-years-old, life-threatening pneumonia, Crohn’s disease-like symptoms. But, she would drag herself to her church’s prayer meetings where friends would lay hands on her and simply pray, “In the name of Jesus, I command this pain of Kerri’s to leave”. It wasn’t fancy or crazy. Just very simple. And Kerri would leave feeling healthy!
Flash-forward to a time when she was waiting backstage before performing at a Women’s Retreat and she picked up a little children’s book that was on a nearby table. While she was killing time, she was looking at the pictures of Jesus healing a blind man. Then, she went out on stage and performed. But, she couldn’t get that story out of her head, even while doing her comedy routine. So, at the conclusion, she wrapped up by saying, “I believe that Jesus still heals the blind, and I feel like there may be someone here tonight who needs to hear that.”
If she would have thought things through, she would have never uttered those words, but she obeyed God’s prompting and said them out loud from the stage.
After the show, this little old lady came up front and approached Kerri. She said, “Welp, today’s my day. I heard you say it, and today’s my day. God’s going to give me my sight back.”
Kerri wanted to wish her well and send her on her way.
“You’re going to pray with me”, said the woman. “I’m blind in one eye and losing sight in my other eye due to macular degeneration.”
So, with tentative obedience, Kerri gathered together her friend (who was a charismatic missionary) and her mother (a conservative Presbyterian who didn’t believe in modern day healings like this), laid hands on the woman and began to pray.
And nothing happened.
They prayed some more.
Still nothing happened.
They prayed even more fervently.
Still no miracle.
Yet, after praying for a mere 20 minutes, the woman began to see again!
What blew Kerri’s mind was how calm the woman was about it all. Kerri was frenetic. She stalked her through lunch, down the hall, back into the auditorium… praying nonstop. But, the cured woman had such incredible faith that God would heal her that she took everything in stride.
Now, I know and I acknowledge that to most people this all sounds crazy.
But, Kerri’s not alone. I, and so many other Christ-followers we know have seen the power of God connecting with His people first-hand!
Another story Kerri tells began when her second daughter was born. Her baby Ruby spent six weeks in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) with a number of “incurable” situations. What Kerri quickly learned was that there are several things that we parents can wrap our heads around when it comes to conditions our kids might be born with. There are treatments for most things or diets that can help. Friends can pray for you and your baby.
But, Ruby was born with a chromosome abnormality and would always have special needs. There’s no cure for what Ruby has. She was also born with a hole in her heart, other respiratory issues, and Down syndrome (chromosome 21 disorder). So, there was Kerri, sitting next to her newborn baby in the hospital on Kerri’s birthday, when her “crazy prayer friends” from church called. They read to her a few verses from Psalm 103:
Praise the Lord, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the Lord, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
He forgives ALL our sins? He heals ALL our diseases?
But the truth is that God is bigger than even the things our best doctors say are impossible and incurable.
However, it wasn’t easy. Kerri battled with her own thoughts – depressing thoughts – and with the enemy.
“You’re done! Your daughter’s done! You don’t have a healing ministry. This kid’s going to be sick her entire life. She’ll be on oxygen til she’s a teenager, she’s going to need leg braces to walk, if she ever will be able to get up. Her muscles are so weak, she’ll never be able to function normally. She’s never going to go to school.”
But Kerri persisted in faithful prayer.
Yet, as Kerri says, it wasn’t easy… nor was anything immediate. But, within just a few days, the hole in Ruby’s heart disappeared – WITHOUT SURGERY!
Kerri remembers thinking, “Satan… you have messed with the wrong mom! You don’t even know what’s about to go down. And Kerri became a prayer warrior at that hospital, praying for the other babies in the NICU, for the doctors, the nurses, other patients, even the maintenance workers and the ladies working in the cafeteria.
Within six months (note that this didn’t happen in a day), the UCLA specialists delivered the news that Ruby’s heart and lungs had miraculously healed themselves, with no surgery ever needed. Then she started crawling. Before long, she started walking. Then she began talking.
Every day of Ruby’s life has been a journey filled with opportunities for Kerri to speak with other parents in the Special Needs Community and encourage them with what she has learned.
“I am not special”, Kerri often says, “but my God is; and you can experience the same relationship with Him that I have!”
All this has resulted in Team Avalanche – a global prayer team consisting of faithful parents who intercede for children, praying that they would experience freedom, joy, and relief from their pain.
To see more about what’s going on in Kerri and Ruby’s life, as well as ask Kerri to pray for you – she responds to everyone – simply check out her Facebook page.