By Katie Ginn
Emily Guthrie grew up in northeast Jackson. As a teen, she went on mission trips. Heath Ferguson grew up in rural Copiah County. As a teen – starting at age 11, in fact – he abused alcohol and drugs. But he and Emily have more in common than you might assume.
Through a winding path of broken homes, addiction, and redemption, God led Heath and Emily to each other – and to a radical transparency that marks their marriage today.
“When I was 4, I watched my dad pack up all his stuff and leave. It’s one of my earliest memories,” Heath recalls.
After Heath’s mom remarried and the family moved to Hazlehurst, his stepdad “began emotionally and sexually abusing me from the time I was 4 to 8 years old,” Heath says.
The marriage ended for unrelated reasons when Heath was 8 (he didn’t tell his mom about the abuse for years). But the damage was done. “I was drunk at age 11,” he says. “I was unknowingly treating the effects of the abuse. At 14, I tried drugs.”
Growing up on a farm, “I knew how to work,” Heath says. “Coming up in my teens and 20s, I could be a functional addict.” Until he couldn’t. The arrests piled up, including one that landed him in jail in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he used his shoe for a pillow.
“(Friends and I) would go to northern Mexico and buy narcotics pills for cheap,” he says. “I was an embarrassment to my family.”
Finally, in his early 30s, Heath was arrested traveling back from Mexico with a number of pills that should have landed him in prison.
“Judge Mike Taylor of the 14th District Court offered me drug court instead of prison. You have to do rehab first,” Heath recalls. He chose rehab and was sent there on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, while most of his friends were probably partying.
After rehab, Heath worked to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Every day at 5 p.m., he would call a number to find out if he would be drug tested, which happened randomly two to four times a week.
“I was pretty miserable the first year,” he says. “I didn’t have dope or God.” Still, he managed to stay sober. “I went to see my grandfather, who was dying of cancer, because I wanted to tell him I’d gotten a year,” Heath recalls.
“He didn’t ask me where I had been or what I had been doing – he just loved me. And he asked me to live with him for what turned out to be the last few weeks of his life. I got to experience his affection for me.”
Heath’s family had supported his recovery journey and offered him unconditional love – but it wasn’t until now that he started to believe in it.
“I began to believe I was worth God’s love,” he says. “I realized the gospel was for me too.”
Opening Pandora’s box
Emily knew the gospel was for her at age 6.
“My parents taught Sunday school and were very involved,” she recalls. “(At 6 years old) I started asking questions about God. I was riding in a truck with my dad and knew he would tell me the truth. I accepted Jesus in that truck with my dad.”
Emily’s dad was drafted to Vietnam, married her mom after his return, worked his way through college and law school, and started a successful oil and gas business. He loved his family, and he showed it.
“My dad grew up never being told, ‘I love you.’ He vowed to not repeat that with us.”
Emily’s young conversion fit the context of a wholesome northeast Jackson life. Her family attended First Presbyterian every week. “We looked perfect from the outside,” she says.
However, “my dad suffered with undiagnosed PTSD from Vietnam, and my mom just wanted that perfection. It was like a pressure cooker. I was a worrier and just tried to stay under the radar.”
When Emily was in junior high, her parents’ Sunday school teacher shared how a Christian therapist had strengthened his marriage; the teacher encouraged the whole class to see the counselor, so Emily’s parents went.
“The therapist opened the box of PTSD, and my dad didn’t know how to deal with it. He stopped going. He wanted out. We were told it was like he reverted back to when he was drafted at 18 and was acting like that.”
Emily’s parents divorced. Her dad told her sister he wouldn’t walk her down the aisle at her upcoming wedding. He remarried and moved to Vicksburg. “My mom suffered with depression, understandably,” Emily says.
One bright spot: “My dad would take me and my brother to school. He had to drive from Vicksburg every morning to pick us up and take us to two different schools. I was his baby girl, but that was pretty much the only time we would see him. I didn’t know how much the Lord would use those mornings to mend our relationship.”
Meanwhile, a youth director named Tracy poured into Emily and her friends – urging them to share prayer requests that reached below the surface – and “we would sit and pray with and for one another. I found a safe place. My friends became family.”
Then a seemingly random trip to an Ole Miss campus ministry event proved to be a turning point: “(The speaker) had decided to go off course that night and preach on the Lord’s prayer. (That night, the words) ‘forgive us as we forgive others’ (hit me differently). Forgive me the way I forgive my parents …”
Emily had a scholarship to the Savannah College of Art and Design. She had a roommate. She had also grown up as a Mississippi State fan. But the next morning, she told her dad she was going to Ole Miss, where she had heard that sermon.
She majored in art, psychology, and human development, and aimed to be an art therapist for teens. Then while attending Reformed Theological Seminary, she interned with the youth group at First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, where Tracy had impacted her years before.
“I didn’t finish seminary because they moved me up to Associate Director. It was Tracy’s old job.”
At this point in Emily’s life – having learned to share her heart with trusted friends, having forgiven her parents – “I thought I was an open book,” she recalls. “Enter Heath.”
‘I’m going to marry you’
Before Heath’s grandfather died, he gave Heath three words: “Go to church.” Heath followed this directive and went to Stronghope Baptist in Copiah County.
“They had a new pastor who was so kind and friendly to me. I found community, acceptance. I learned that transparency was healthy and good.”
As Heath embraced his new life in Christ and in recovery, he attended classes at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.
After traveling to Oxford for a graduation party, Heath ran into Emily. They knew each other through mutual friends, but not well. She only knew his reputation as an addict – everybody knew that.
Heath found Emily on Facebook and asked her out. She said no the first time, but when he asked a week later, she said yes.
“June 19, 2009 was our first date,” Heath recalls, now sitting next to Emily in their home in Gluckstadt. “My truck had no A/C. My dad let me borrow his. We found a little restaurant at Renaissance (in Ridgeland) – do you remember what it was?”
“Sweet Peppers,” Emily says.
“Then we hung out on her back porch. I remember telling her that night, ‘I’m going to marry you.’”
“He said, ‘If we start dating, I can’t date you for long,’” Emily recalls. “And I was like, what does that mean? He said, ‘I’m going to marry you.’ Normally I would’ve freaked out (if someone had said that) – but it just wasn’t weird.”
They continued seeing each other, and Heath kept saying things you just don’t say on a date.
“We went to dinner with friends of mine, and he says, ‘Hey, I’m Heath, I’m a recovering addict,’” Emily recalls. “And I was like, ‘Can they get to know you first?’ I was telling my story to people I knew (but) he was telling his story to strangers.”
On December 19, 2009 – exactly six months after their first date – Heath and Emily got married.
Their time as newlyweds in New Orleans was short. By the next summer, Emily was pregnant with their first son – and on a visit to her doctor in Jackson, she and Heath ran into a friend of his who suggested he look into becoming a chaplain at Baptist Hospital.
The Fergusons moved to Jackson, where Heath interned at Baptist two days a week while finishing seminary online.
Heath also went to work for Emily’s father, Michael, who was now ill. Before long, they discovered his illness was terminal cancer. Michael had long since apologized to Emily and asked forgiveness for his years-earlier behavior.
“He recognized that (my siblings and I) saw his failures and still accepted him,” Emily says. “(Likewise) we always knew if we messed up, we could tell our dad.”
(Heath and his own father also developed a strong bond, despite his leaving when Heath was young, he says. “When my dad left, he was 28. At 28, I would’ve done worse. I can’t judge him for that. He and I have a great relationship now.”)
On November 5, 2010, Michael Gerald “MG” Ferguson was born. He was named Michael for Emily’s dad and Gerald for Heath’s grandfather Milford Gerald (also called MG), who’d shown Heath the love of Jesus.
Barely a month later, Emily’s father passed away. Shortly after that was her and Heath’s first anniversary.
“I wasn’t a very good chaplain to you,” Heath says to Emily of that time. “It’s so hard to see someone you love suffer; you don’t want to be around it. You just want to fix it.”
Dealing with a birth and a death in quick succession would be a tall order for any couple, especially newlyweds. After all, they were still learning how to communicate.
“Our first year of marriage, I thought I had broken her. I didn’t know a human could cry (that much),” Heath says. “She had a chair she would sit in, and we called it the angry chair.”
“Because there wasn’t enough room for you to sit next to me,” Emily says. “(Our marriage improved) once we learned how each one of us handles conflict … My dad used to yell all the time. So I shut down (during conflict because) I need time to process. Heath’s dad left, so Heath thinks I’m leaving when I shut down.”
“I tell (couples I counsel) that marriage is the hardest and the best thing I’ve ever done – to the fullness of both of those things,” Heath says.
‘Daddy’s been to jail?’
While completing his seminary degree and chaplaincy training, Heath was called to be pastor of a small church. He and Emily’s oldest son, MG, “had like nine mamaws” at the church, Emily says. Heath also officially became a chaplain at Baptist Hospital, before he’d even finished his training.
Meanwhile, Emily needed a flexible job as a new mom and found one as a realtor with Nix-Tann & Associates. Now she helps people navigate the process of buying and selling homes – something that requires clear communication and an understanding of each person’s desires.
“I didn’t know how much I’d use my psychology degree (in this job),” Emily says.
In 2016, younger son Locke was born (full name Tadlock Evins, in honor of Heath’s stepgrandfather and Emily’s grandfather). That same year, Heath was asked to be head chaplain at Baptist. He stepped away from the church a few months later.
He also obtained his master’s in counseling. While chaplain duties involve a lot of bedside prayer and grief ministry, being a counselor helps Heath meet mental health needs in the long term.
“I wanted to be more effective in caring for the (hospital) staff,” explains Heath, who went on to become a licensed professional counselor (LPC). “The patients aren’t there very long, so you find yourself caring a lot for the staff (over time).”
“If you walk into (Baptist) with him, it doesn’t matter who you see – they know him, and he knows their story,” Emily says.
After 15 years at Baptist, Heath just stepped away last month to become the adult and family therapist at The Woman’s Clinic, where he sees men, women, and families. (You don’t have to be pregnant, female, or even a Woman’s Clinic patient to see him.) He also practices at Cornerstone Counseling in Jackson, though he is not currently accepting new clients there.
Eighteen years ago, if a judge hadn’t shown Heath mercy, he would be serving the tail end of a 19-year prison sentence for possession with intent to distribute. Instead he met Jesus, and he met Emily – and he’s not afraid to talk about all of the above.
Even the Ferguson boys know Heath’s addiction story – though they didn’t always know all the details. After looking up his dad online one day, MG said, “Mom, did you know Daddy’s been to jail?”
“I want them to know the dangers (of addiction),” Heath says. “But I also want them to know the forgiveness and redemption that God offers. (I want people to) understand their value and worth doesn’t change on their worst day or their best day.”