AI, authenticity, Psalm 22, and allowing my story to point beyond me

~When the Mockery Reaches the Door~

A message arrived in my Instagram DMs the other day asking whether the “hate” had reached me yet.

The woman wrote, “I’m just curious, Michelle. Are you getting any haters messaging you about your AI images? I hear so many people saying they get the meanest messages from people about anything AI.”

She added one of those little eye-rolling emojis, which somehow said the rest.

I told her no. It had not happened to me yet, but I was not naive enough to believe it never would.

I have only recently begun blogging for the first time in my life. One of my first posts, Where the Blur Still Speaks, showed real photographs taken on vacation that later inspired polished AI images I use on my social media feeds.

The direction I felt from the Holy Spirit was to let readers see where my creativity begins.

Not inside a machine, but inside a lived moment.

A camera in my hand.

A physical detail that caught my eye.

A sacred realization rising from something ordinary.

I understand why creatives are concerned about AI. I am a little concerned myself, although not to the point of becoming consumed by worry.

I see so much content moving across my screen, and sometimes it really can feel as though nobody is home inside the words.

I see writers wondering whether real human voices will become harder to find. I see authors worrying that speed will outrun our skill. I have listened to brilliant local creators spend hours explaining why they believe using AI is cheating and why they will never allow it into their work.

My husband and I have had several conversations about whether everything we are seeing and reading can still be trusted.

Those are fair concerns.

~AI Can Be My Porch Light~

I want my work to carry my authenticity. I want it to reflect a human experience I have actually lived. I believe the Lord speaks to me. He is my Advocate and Counselor, present within this earthly vessel, and I want to take responsibility for the message behind every image and every word I release.

The way I have come to think about AI is simple:

AI can be my porch light. It cannot become the house.

I pray over my work. I grab my camera as a visual storyteller, and I walk around listening.

Sometimes I feel the Holy Spirit saying, Michelle, this week I want you to bring your story forward as a post-abortive woman preparing to publish a memoir. I want you to build this platform around vulnerability, around the shadows you once lived within, and around the reflections you found difficult to face.

AI may help me organize an idea. It may show me another way to present something I am carrying emotionally. Maybe that week I am thinking about anguish, isolation, humiliation, or the cost of telling the truth.

But others need my story, and I am trying to learn how to suffer well.

I remind myself daily that AI cannot live my memories. It cannot carry my convictions. It certainly cannot pray over my words or love the people I hope to reach.

The photograph captured what stood before me. The AI-generated interpretation helped me show what the moment felt like inside me.

~Someone Is Home Inside the Words~

This house, this earthly vessel, this windswept fortress, is the life I have actually lived.

I am a one-time published author with a tenth-grade education. I did not go to college, and for years, right up until last week probably, I allowed that fact to make me shrink back.

I have wondered, and sometimes still wonder, whether people with more education, more credentials, and better resumes have more right to speak about subjects like this than I do.

But what I know is that I am organically intelligent. I am exceptionally observant. I learn when I listen because I have learned to listen well.

I notice physical details and the sacred realization hidden inside them.

I spent years working professionally as a photographer and owned brick-and-mortar studios. I am trained as a healing coach for women who have chosen abortion and suffer beneath the guilt, grief, and trauma that may follow. I am also a woman who is still trying, daily, to understand what God is doing with the pieces of her own life.

I am a visual storyteller.

That is who I am.

Most importantly, I am forgiven and set free in Christ. God’s Word tells me that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony.

My authority does not come from pretending I have never sinned. It comes from telling the truth about what Jesus has done with a life that could not save itself.

The photograph gave me more than a wall and a window. As I looked at it, I tapped into the woman who is always living, listening, and creating inside the words. The AI interpretation helped me show her.

My Sin Has Meaning

As a post-abortive woman, I am preparing to bring my story into the light through a nonfiction memoir.

I know some people will see redemption in that story. Others will see only the sin.

Some will believe God can use my testimony because, glory to God, He can use all things for good. I want to stand beside the men and women who remain silent beneath guilt and shame. I want my story to help wounded people recognize that they are not beyond healing and that shame does not have to keep them from living freely in the purpose God still has for them.

Others may decide I should remain permanently condemned for what I first chose at fifteen.

That will be part of the cost of telling the truth publicly.

On Sunday, the message that held me still was about emotional anguish and learning how to suffer well because someone else may need our story.

The pastor spoke from Psalm 22.

It is a psalm filled with abandonment, mockery, humiliation, isolation, physical agony, and people circling close enough to turn suffering into a spectacle.

Christ carried its opening cry onto the cross. He was mocked. His garments were divided. He suffered in ways I would never place beside my own as though they accomplished the same thing.

His suffering redeemed me.

Mine cannot redeem anyone.

But because Christ suffered first, my suffering does not have to remain meaningless.

While the pastor was speaking, I wrote down a thought that struck me with tremendous force:

My sin has meaning.

My redemption in Christ does not call my sin or the ruin in my life beautiful. It reveals that Christ can still build something beautiful from what my sin left behind.

I do not mean that the sin was good or that God required it so I would have a story to tell. I mean that it does not have to remain an empty place of shame. In Christ, even what I most deeply regret can become part of a testimony that points another hurting person toward freedom.

My sin does not get the final word. My redemption in Christ does.

Psalm 22 eventually turns outward. Anguish becomes proclamation. The sufferer declares what God has done so that others, even generations still to come, may hear.

The methods available to us are changing. If AI-created images can help me carry the truth of my testimony farther, I will continue to use AI.

~A Strengthened Heart, Not a Hardened One~

I expect criticism will come because of my testimony, my faith, or the tools I use to help carry the message. When suffering comes, it will not mean pretending it does not hurt.

It will not mean retaliating.

It will not mean calling myself a martyr.

One of my beta readers recently suggested that I might need to sit in cruel comment sections until my heart becomes a little numb because the haters and hateful comments are coming once I go public with my story.

I understand what she was trying to prepare me for, but I do not want a hardened heart.

I want a strengthened heart.

I am asking God to bolt armor onto my heart, armor that does not keep me from feeling but keeps pain from deciding how I will respond.

~Balance Is the Word for Me~

I would never rely on AI more than I rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. God calls me to wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

But I will continue to use spellcheck, even when my Southern drawl confuses Word so badly that I have to jump over to Google and ask for backup.

I use search engines. I definitely need grammar assistance. Who does not appreciate editing tools?

I am not a heavy filter user, even in photography. For years, my trademark was, “Be Encouraged. Live inspired.”

Then AI began producing hundreds of headshots in minutes, and my headshot business at my brick-and-mortar studio could no longer compete. I changed my working trademark to, “Crave Authenticity.”

Do I use editing tools to remove a park bench or trash can that distracts from an image? Absolutely.

Will I place you in a field of wildflowers where you never stood or reshape your body into someone God did not create? No. I will not be the right photographer for that.

I believe we are fearfully and wonderfully made. If we all looked and sounded exactly alike, we would be bored to death.

I am also guilty of wanting everything faster. I am thirty-six months away from my sixtieth birthday, and I can still put a six-minute frozen chicken breast in the microwave and wonder why it cannot be ready in ninety seconds.

Efficiency will always be useful.

Speed will always be tempting.

Neither one is wisdom.

I recently read a line from Global Work AI about balancing automation with human judgment, efficiency with authenticity, and speed with depth.

One word stayed with me:

Balance.

Efficiency beside authenticity.
Speed beside depth.
Automation beside human judgment.

Wisdom above them all.

Inspired by a line shared by Global Work AI about balancing automation with human judgment, efficiency with authenticity, and speed with depth. “Wisdom above them all” reflects my own conclusion.

~The Finest Ghostwriter on Board~

And as a follower of Christ, my human judgment cannot be the highest authority.

I want it submitted to Scripture, prayer, wisdom, and the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes I feel a quiet resistance inside when I am preparing to quote or share something. I have removed posts because I felt the Advocate saying, Slow down, Michelle. That may not be theologically sound. Go back to God’s Word. Ask whether these are truly your words to share.

I believe the Holy Spirit is the finest ghostwriter I will ever have on board.

Not because He removes my voice, but because He helps me recognize when my voice has wandered away from truth.

Christ has set me free, and I have no interest in placing myself beneath another yoke.

Not the yoke of shame.
Not the yoke of performance.
Not the yoke of public opinion.

And certainly not the fear that every person must understand how I create before I am allowed to create.

~What I Saw Still Mattered~

I cannot require or expect everyone to interpret my sacred moments exactly as I do.

People have laughed for years about seeing the face of Jesus in tree bark, paneled walls, grilled cheese sandwiches, and the occasional cinnamon roll that somehow makes the evening news.

I understand why they laugh. I have laughed too.

But I have also seen faces emerge in trees and encountered ordinary moments that felt holy enough to stop me in my tracks.

Someone else may call it pattern recognition. I may receive it as an invitation to pause and pay close attention to God.

I do not have to force my interpretation onto another person for that moment to have mattered deeply to me.

I can only tell the truth about what I saw, what I believed it meant, and what changed inside me afterward.

That is the exact humanity I want to protect in my work.

I am not going to let AI have my voice. I am not going to let it become the entire vessel.

But it can illuminate places.

~Let Wisdom Decide What Enters the House~

A close friend once reminded me that Jesus Christ did not board a private jet or airplane to travel from place to place while preaching the gospel. He strapped on His sandals and walked.

That does not mean I must walk a thousand miles if I am invited to share my testimony in another state.

Methods change. The message does not.

The existence of a new method does not automatically make it wise, but neither does its newness make it unfaithful. Wisdom must still decide how the method is used.

I want the AI porch light to help someone find the door.

My tagline, “Follow the light where it gets most honest,” comes from the depths of my soul.

I want wisdom to decide what enters the house.

I want my testimony to tell the truth about sin and an even greater truth about grace.

So my prayer is this:

Lord, please let humanity remain the heartbeat behind my work, and let everything I create point beyond me to You.

The building reflected what stood across the street. The interpretation helped me show what I was learning beneath it: before I carry a message into the world, I want wisdom to decide what enters the house.