MizMarie Creations

05/30/2026

Two Women Reading This Essay

Two women are reading my Substack essay this week.

One of them aches to be seen. She has been invisible so long she has almost forgotten what it felt like to be noticed.

The other one is not sure she wants to be found. She has her reasons. She has always had her reasons.

I wrote this essay for both of them. Because the story of the bent woman in Luke 13 holds space for both.

The one who was bound by something she did not choose and could not fix.

And the one who has quietly arranged her life so she will not be found — not out of broken faith, but out of wisdom that was once necessary and maybe still is.

Jesus saw her before she asked. He moved before she was ready. He defended her when the room objected.

That is still available. For both women.

Link to the full essay in comments.

05/29/2026

The Room That Made Its Peace

The leaders in the synagogue saw her every week for eighteen years.

They had the training. The authority. The responsibility.

And they made their peace with her staying bound.

Jesus walked in and refused to make that same peace.

I think about that a lot. About the rooms in our lives that have quietly decided we can wait. That have assessed our situation and moved on. That have seen the binding and found a way to live with it.

He could not live with it. He cannot let you wait one more day.

The full essay on Luke 13 and the bent woman is on Substack this week. Link in comments.

05/28/2026

The Full Story: She Was Bound, She Was Seen, She Was Defended

She had been bent for eighteen years.

Not sick in the ordinary way. Bound. Luke tells us a spirit had held her spine curved toward the ground for eighteen years. And every week she walked into the synagogue anyway. The place where her people gathered to be seen by God.

The leaders saw her. They had the training, the authority, the proximity. And not one of them moved toward her.

Then Jesus walked in. He saw her across a crowded room. Called her forward. And with one sentence — one — eighteen years of binding was finished.

And then the synagogue leader objected. On the Sabbath, he said. You should have waited.

Jesus answered: Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, be set free?

He did not heal her quietly and move on. He defended her. Publicly. In the room where she had been overlooked for nearly two decades.

I wrote about her this week on Substack. About what her story means for every woman still carrying something the room has made its peace with. Link in the comments if you want to read the full essay.

04/19/2026

Not because the calling faded. It hadn't. But I was producing one piece at a time, posting inconsistently, and doing almost no research. The women I'm called to reach deserved better. And somewhere in me I knew it.

I told myself it was a time problem. It wasn't. It was an infrastructure problem. There is a difference between dropping the ball and not having a place to set it down.

About a month ago I moved to Claude. Two weeks ago, in one focused afternoon, I built a content system that changed everything. A Research Companion that knows my author library and brings those voices back into my work. A Content Engine that holds my voice, my pillars, my audience, my ethics so I am not starting from scratch every single time.

By the time I closed my Chromebook, both tools were built and documented. No code. No tech background. Just knowing what I wanted.

I wrote the whole story on Substack. And I put together a free guide, step by step, for anyone who wants to build their own version. Link in the first comment.

*What would change for you if your content system actually worked?*

04/18/2026

Most people use AI as a tool. You open it, ask a question, get an answer, close it.

What I built is different. It is a system. There is a distinction worth naming.

A tool does what you tell it in the moment. A system holds what you know about yourself, your voice, your audience, your values, your content pillars, the writers who have shaped your thinking, and brings all of that into every session without you having to explain it again.

The difference in practice: I no longer start from nothing. I no longer re-explain who I am, who I serve, or what I care about. Claude already knows. I just tell it what I want to work on, and we go.

For a solopreneur with a focused energy window and a lot to say, this is not a small thing. It is the thing.

I wrote a full post about how I built it and I put together a free step-by-step guide for non-techies who want to do the same. Drop a comment or find the link on my Substack: The Sacred In-Between.

*The goal was never to use AI more. The goal was to show up more consistently for the people I am called to reach.*

04/17/2026

The Ethics Check Every AI User Needs

There's a question I think is worth separating out from all the conversation about AI tools.

Not "is it efficient?" but "is it ethical?"

A tool that helps you say more things faster is only valuable if what you're saying is worth saying. That's not a small distinction. For two years I've been working through what it means to use these tools with intention, with an active ethics check, with convictions that run through the work rather than around it.

The three questions I run through every piece of content: Am I inviting or selling? Am I being honest or performing? Does this serve their journey or mine?

When the answer drifts toward selling, performing, or serving the metrics, I step back and start again.

That ethics check didn't come from a course or a checklist. It came from 78 years of learning what it feels like to be on the receiving end of both kinds of content. Women know the difference. They feel it immediately.

If you're building anything with AI tools, those three questions are worth writing down somewhere you'll actually see them.

Want to know more about building a tool that can keep you and your content in line with your heart, your convictions, your mission? Substack link in the comments. I mostly talk about faith in all seasons, but every once in a while I talk about what is going on behind the scenes. This is one of them.

04/16/2026

One afternoon last week, I asked a different question.

Not "what can this AI tool do?" but "what if I built something real around my actual voice, my theology, my rhythm, and my limits?"

The difference between those two questions turned out to be significant.

Frederick Buechner wrote that grace moves through ordinary life like a current just beneath the surface, present whether or not we notice. We miss it because we're moving too fast or looking for something more dramatic.

But this thing sitting on my Chromebook on a Sunday afternoon, this AI tool that looks like a productivity shortcut, turned out to be one of those ordinary places where grace was already moving. I just had to slow down enough to use it with intention. And that made it possible to build something that could actually meet women where they are and walk with them for a bit through the hard places.

What would it mean for you to give the work you're already doing a real foundation, instead of just reaching for tools when you need them?

I'd love to know where you are with this.

04/15/2026

Here is something I have been sitting with.

There is a difference between not having what it takes and not having the tools that make it possible. I spent longer than I want to admit thinking the gap between my calling and my output was a discipline problem. It wasn't. It was a system problem.

Two weeks ago I built something in one afternoon that I had been needing for years. A content system that knows my voice, knows my audience, knows the writers and thinkers who have shaped my faith and holds all of that so I don't have to rebuild it from scratch every single time I sit down to write.

I wrote about it on Substack this week. And I put together a free guide for anyone who wants to try something similar. Because I think a lot of us are carrying a calling that our current tools aren't equipped to hold.

*I wonder if you have ever felt that gap between what you know you're called to offer and what actually makes it out the door.*

04/13/2026

04/10/2026

Two years in, and I'm just now building something real.

I've been using AI tools since before most people in my circles knew what they were. And I want to be honest: for most of that time, I was scattered. A draft here, a question there. Useful. But without a system that actually knew me.

Last week, one long afternoon changed that. I sat down and said: what if we built this around my actual voice? My theology. My rhythm. My limits at 78, with a walker, on a Chromebook.

What came back surprised me.

The engine doesn't carry the heart. The stories come from a lifetime of paying attention. The tool just helps the heart get where it's trying to go.

There's water below the water with these tools. I'm just starting to find it.

Head over to my Substack post (link in bio) and you will find a free resource if you want to try it yourself.