Sandra @sandragaviriatabares from Colombia came to us with words she heard in a dream after a succession of losses and upheavals in her life.

During that time, fear had begun to overwhelm her, though she said she never lost her faith. One morning before waking, Sandra saw herself standing in a desert as an angel descended from heaven. In the dream, she repeated the same words three times:

“The angel of the Lord accompanies me, protects my departure and takes care of my arrival.”

She woke in the darkness still repeating them and immediately wrote them down.

We found two biblical passages that closely resembled the words she had heard. Psalm 121:8 speaks of God guarding one’s going and coming, while Exodus 23:20 describes an angel sent ahead to guard a person along the way. We used these verses to help translate Sandra’s words into Hebrew while keeping the first person voice of her dream: מַלְאַךְ ה’ מְלַוֶּה אוֹתִי, שׁוֹמֵר אֶת צֵאתִי וְשׁוֹמֵר אֶת בּוֹאִי, “The angel of the Lord accompanies me, guards my going out and guards my coming in.”

From the beginning, Sandra imagined wings subtly emerging from her spine.

Gabriel developed that idea into the figure of a winged angel. He wanted the wings to carry some of the difficulty behind the words. From a distance, the form is calm, with large wings and a delicate central line. Up close, blue ink textures, splatters and drag marks interrupt the smoothness of the image, allowing the marks of struggle to remain visible.

Sandra connected immediately with that tension. She described scars as something we carry to remember that healing has taken place. For her, the wings came to hold the protection she asked for in the dream and the faith that carried her through what followed.