By Amber Weigand-Buckley
“Undress from the waist up, wipe off all deodorant.”
I like pink, but on this particular September day, the shade of pink wasn’t one I’d choose—a tie-in-the-front top that came with very specific instructions that made vulnerability a mandate—not the option.
October means pink ribbons everywhere, but this year came crashing in as a reality check when pink chose me.
Walking from the clinic to the diagnostic changing room, crossing that corridor where mortality meets you face-to-face—young and old beauties, all vulnerable from the waist up, missing the usual support that helps carry the weight closest to our hearts.
In this place we were a different kind of Pink Ladies tribe-
—not satin jackets and attitude, but hospital gowns and courage we didn’t know we had.
Sitting in that waiting room, my mind wandered to those pink naked ladies sprouting in my flower bed.
Resilient things—some pulled from the root, yet still blooming in the driveway cracks. Stalks straight, heads held high.
That’s when I looked down at my latest book—Flowers Find a Way: Resilent Blooms of Relentless Faith—and felt Father whisper: Maybe you’re here to plant something.
The woman who walked in on me pulling up my yoga pants because I failed to lock the loo door? Comic relief.
I blurted out, “Don’t worry, we’ve all lost our dignity here—the number of times I’ve been felt up in this place.” Laughter broke across that room like medicine.
And then came the call with the results.
Not cancer. But not nothing either. Something that could have turned bad if left— caught just in time because I showed up, put on the pink gown, and let them look. It’s more like being handed back your own life with fresh eyes, realizing even when you’re planted in the cracks, you can still choose to bloom.
If you’re in your own pink gown season—whatever that looks like— waiting, wondering what in the world comes-next—you’re not alone. You’re planted. You’re held.
This issue of Leading Hearts is full of these moments—the broken-to healing stories that dig deep into the reality of God with us in every space. In the hospital gowns. In the waiting rooms. In the places we’d rather not be planted.
These are the stories where light finds a way through our humanness, where hope grows in the cracks, and where we discover we were never standing alone. Turn the page. Let’s bloom together.
