Episode 1: Ed & Laurie FIsher

Ed and Lori Fisher have been married for 42 years. They met when Lori was a dental assistant and Ed was a dental student. They got engaged after 29 days of dating and have been together ever since. They built a successful dental practice together and recently passed it on to their children. Their faith played a big role in their business practices and they saw their dental office as a ministry. They treated their patients with care and listened to their concerns, often providing dental services free of charge or at a reduced fee. They believe that being Christians held them to a higher standard in running their business and they always aimed to meet those expectations. Sometimes he'd come home from work and say, well, I did a lot of counseling today and a little bit of dentistry. Hello and thank you so much for joining us today. I'm with some dear friends and mentors of mine, Ed and Lori Fisher. I'm so excited for them to share a little bit of their story, so we're going to jump right in. You guys have been married for 42 years now. How did you guys meet? Well, I went down to the IU School of Dentistry to become a dental assistant in 1981 and got accused by a man in my church that I was just going down to find a husband and I said, not true. And then at Ed's and my wedding, he said, I told you so, because I married a dental student and then we moved up to northeast Indiana and took over a retiring dentist's practice where Ed worked for 40 years and then retired a year and a half ago. The story that I do tell people is I was a little older than the people in my dental assisting class by a couple years and there were about 105 students in his dental school class and he just jumped out at me as a man who would make a wonderful husband and wonderful father. So I started trying to fix him up with all of my classmates, but none of them wanted to go out with him and I really do not know to this day what changed, but somehow he asked me out. 29 days later, we were engaged, got married, what, four months after that, and here we are, 42 and a half years later. I guess when you know, you know. I was 24 when we started dating, I believe, or was I, yeah, I was 24. And having looked at dental school as a pretty lengthy run, it's a seven-year stretch for me to do that, I kind of mentally decided I wasn't going to really be serious about maybe pursuing a wife or anything until I got pretty far along in school. So when I got to be a junior, you start letting your hair down a little bit and thinking, well, maybe I can start looking a little bit. She was right, we, as a class, my junior year got paired with her dental assisting class in clinics and I got to work with all of them and I probably tried to swoon all of them and nothing really worked, but I noticed a maturity in her that was more than just a two-year gap between her classmates and her. And I think we just started talking. I think it was one of those things where we just recognized it was a natural fit to just have easy conversation and I asked her out on June 12th and, you know, we waited a whopping 28 days to get engaged and I tell people we speed dated. We saw each other every day for an entire month, which is like six months of weekend dating and stuff like that. So everybody, you know, gasped when they hear, you get engaged so quickly. Well, you know, we were so mature. She's 21, I'm 24, so it makes a difference. But got married, finished my senior year of dental school, moved back to Byrne, our hometown where I bought a practice for a retiring dentist and we established that together. Stayed in the small office we started in for four years and then we expanded and moved out to Forth Park Drive. Stayed in that office from 1986 to 2012 and then we expanded further when I brought my son Paul into the practice. We practiced together for 10 years and in July of 2022, I retired after 40 years of dentistry to the day and we've been partners in the whole dental business all those years. So now we're enjoying kind of semi-retirement. Your kids have now all joined the practice in different ways. What does it mean to you guys knowing that you're leaving the office into their hands? Truly a family business. I had no intention, I did not coerce any of my kids to go into the world of dentistry. As a matter of fact, our daughter Lila, who's our front desk manager, swore she would never work in the dental office and we convinced her to change her mind on that. But Paul showed us quite a proclivity toward, he's very intelligent, had a lot of science knowledge and stuff and had been exposed to the world of dentistry to where it was kind of a natural segue for him. My oldest son Joe, very artistic. He ended up becoming a dental lab technician because that kind of fit his persona and style. And Lila was very organized. She actually got a degree in accounting at Ball State but decided she didn't want to be an accountant. So it worked out where she could use some of those business skills she learned in college to segue into the front desk position. Lori's always been the office manager, been the inventory manager, staff manager, and my confidant in prime doing our dentistry together. So we bounce a lot of, we spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off of one another. That's been a good partnership too. We tried working together for six months and we realized that probably wasn't going to be a good thing. Even though she was trained as a dental assistant and I was a dentist, it's like, eh, maybe we should figure out a way to work around that. Am I right, dear? Oh yeah, you're right. I think of when you're running a relay and you're passing a baton to the next runner, I feel like we invested a lot of ourselves in the dental office and it is wonderful to be able to pass the baton to our kids who care about it as much as we do. So the practice has been sold to our son and it just is a very heartwarming feeling to know that what Ed worked so hard on all those years is in very good hands. I'm in now more of an advisory role and head yard mower and things like that for the office. So it's a good career, it really was. That really has to be a wonderful feeling to know your kids are just as passionate about finishing what you started. Right. I tell people, I spent 40 years building the practice and the relationships and trust and camaraderie with the patients. They're more than patients, they're family, they're friends, they're people we deal with in the community, we go to church with, have social things. So that made it very special to me, not only from a relationship standpoint, but knowing we could have continuity with my son taking over. So it feels good. Yeah, I mean, your faith is obviously going to play a big part in your business practices and the way you run your office. Would you say that the office was your ministry in a way? Absolutely. I didn't do hands-on with the patient's chair side. I dealt more behind the scenes. But I know for a fact that Ed spent many hours throughout the years discussing issues of faith. Sometimes he'd come home from work and say, well, I did a lot of counseling today and a little bit of dentistry. We humans have needs and our dental needs are just one of them. And when you go to your dentist for many years, even many decades, you learn to trust him. And so they've talked, spiritually speaking, many times, exchanged prayer requests. And it's impacted the relationship that we've had with our patients in many ways. We've never been compelled to take a mission trip and go do dentistry in a faraway place. Ed says that he does his mission work here. There are many times, many people that he's helped dentally, free of charge or at a reduced fee because he knew of the need they had. And I think that the bulk of them also know that he does it because of his faith in Jesus. Yeah, I would second that. Our walk with the Lord, first of all, it's an ongoing process. We're still growing as Christians, even after having been a believer for 50 to 60 years. It is a guiding principle for how you manage your business. You have to treat people, they're human beings. One of my slogans, we don't just treat teeth, we treat people. And that's really true. We treat the whole human being and you have to listen. You have to be willing to hear what their concerns are. And she's right. I spend a lot of time listening to patients. Sometimes that setting just lent itself to people opening up about things that were hard or on their heart. And most of the time they left feeling much better about the situation or whatever, just because I was able to just relate my faith to what was going on. I didn't try to beat them over the head with scripture or anything like that. But I did share from a standpoint, this is what the Lord has you going through, those kind of things. So it was a guiding principle. When you're doing health care, you have to be honest with people. You have to be fair with people. And it only makes sense. It really does. So I was thankful I had that moral compass and that biblical standard with which to run our practice. Yeah. And I even think that people who profess to be Christians are held to a different standard in a way, especially as a Christian business owner, you've got a lot of eyes on you. So how would you say that you guys handled, I don't know if pressure is the right word, of knowing that people are watching you and the way you run your business as a figure of what living the Christian life looks like? I think when they know you are a believer, when they know you're a Christian, there is a certain expectation of how you treat them. And I don't feel like we ever really fell short of that. You know, there are times when you may have a disagreement with an aspect of patient interaction or something, but you still try to present the best possible outcome for that. I think that's why a lot of people told me their stories and their outcome because they knew I was a Christian and maybe were hoping to get some glimpse of what maybe I would do in that situation. You know, I didn't necessarily solicit, let's sit down and have a counseling session. It just was natural. One of the things I always told people I found interesting is invariably when a patient would come in, someone who had experienced a traumatic life experience, lost a spouse, lost a parent, lost a child, anything, lost a friend. I don't know why the Lord did this, but almost always within a one to four week period after they experienced that loss, guess where they were? In my dental chair. And I would just listen to them. And sometimes I'd even ask the question, how are you getting along with your new normal? Or, you know, you have my condolences, et cetera. Some people were just flooding with emotion about that. Glad to get it off their chest. And others, I could tell they weren't ready to talk about it yet. So I just did my work and went on. But I thought it was uncanny. Why did the Lord make that divine appointment to have them cross my path right at this time? I still don't understand it, but in a way, it was a divine appointment. I still don't understand it, but in a way, I do. It's like I was supposed to be there to be there for them. So I thought that was an interesting part of how that all worked for patient interaction. Yeah, I mean, you're so right. God, I think he truly has a sense of humor. It's almost uncanny how I will get a text or a call or just a message from a friend that I haven't seen forever. I haven't really talked to in months. And it always falls on the days that for whatever reason, I need the most encouragement, whether it was just a rough day or I was going through something in the moment. It always seems that that's exactly when I get a message from a friend. And I think in a way, that's also God's way of kind of telling us that he is still looking out for us. He's still there and he's putting people in our life that are there to make a positive impact. Isn't that amazing how that works? And most people might say that's a coincidence, but we know it really is the moving of the Holy Spirit that's prompting your friend to get a hold of you in your time of need or prompting a dental need to pop up that that patient will be in the chair so close to a time they've suffered a big loss. And Ed is gifted in helping people in that regard. So God made the appointment and that's how it worked out. And in many cases, it was a two-way street. There were times that I needed encouragement. Patients had almost a keen sense when they knew Dr. Fisher wasn't feeling his usual happy self. And they would either give me some word of encouragement or even just a hug, you know, something to say, you're going to be OK. I had a habit of mine when I worked on patients, I would hum a lot. I like music, love music. And it was just a way to break the silence of the dental procedure and the drill. So whenever music was on the radio, I'd hum along. And I don't know how many people would ask me if I'd come in the room and start doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't hum. They'd say, what's the matter? You're not humming. And I said, well, I'm just busy. I hadn't even thought about it yet, but I didn't realize. That spoke to them, the confidence that I presented. They knew I was just happy whenever I was humming. So they wanted Dr. Fisher to be humming, so they knew he'd be in a good mood. So I thought that was interesting, too, that people would do that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, shifting gears just a little bit, we've already talked a lot about how your faith has impacted your lives and your relationships and the way you run your business. But would you both mind sharing a little bit of your testimonies, a little of how you came to Christ and what that has looked like over the last couple of years? I'll start because mine's pretty boring. Okay, she has a much more interesting testimony than I do. I was raised in a Christian home. My mom was a believer, took us kids to church regularly. My dad, we went to church right down the road here, about three miles down the road at St. Louis, UCC. My dad is what I would call a practical believer. He wasn't a big churchgoer because I had a special needs sister growing up my whole life. She wasn't the type of child where it was easy to take her out in public and stuff. So dad would stay home with her when mom needed to go somewhere, particularly on a Sunday to go to church. So he practiced his faith by serving in that way. I went through the motions as a young person. You know, you go through the confirmation class and catechism and become baptized. And I can't pinpoint to the day when I say I became a believer on this date. But it was almost this realization as time went on. By the time I was, oh, probably eight, nine, ten years old, I knew who God was. I knew who Jesus was. And I knew that they were real to me. And through those several steps of your process, procession of faith, you know, it was as I became a believer almost by default. And just continued to grow in my faith. Biggest challenge I had in my faith was when I first went to college and then went to dental school because I experienced an incredible amount of loneliness and separation during that time. And the Lord became very real to me in those times. So that continued to grow. I met a wonderful woman. And I'll let her tell her walk of faith. But she and I have encouraged one another and spurred one another on in our faith. And so I'm just continuing to be a growing, maturing Christian, even at age 67. I still have a lot to learn yet. But I'm now being called upon to mentor and share that wisdom with other younger believers because that's where God has me right now. All righty. Well, I grew up as a little girl in a Baptist church in east central Indiana. I heard all the Bible verses and I went to Sunday school and we learned all the hymns. Then when I was in high school, my family switched to a bigger church in a bigger town. And again, we sang the songs. We went to church. I knew who Jesus was. I knew about Jesus. And I actually thought I was a Christian. My father was a high ranking state policeman. He ran our home in a very dictatorial, authoritarian fashion. And my picture of God, the father, was my dad. I thought that's how God was. And, you know, he would just strike you with lightning if you screwed up too bad. I didn't have an accurate picture of God. Fast forward to our honeymoon when Ed and I, no joke, are laying in bed in a hotel. Doubtful that I have any clothes on. Not sure. Can't remember. But I can. We were watching, believe it or not, we got married on December 19th. So here it is, Christmas time. We're watching on the TV the Jesus film, which is a world famous film in many languages that shows people who Jesus is, what he did, and why it matters. And I'm laying there, having been churched my whole life, and I watch this. And the part where they are nailing Jesus to the cross with every strike of that hammer, it just stunned me when it occurred to me that he did it for me. And so I was just struck with emotion. I was crying. I was asking Ed questions that maybe technically I already knew because you hear so much of that in church. But he was there to answer me. It was there on our honeymoon that I actually became saved. And so what I learned was you can go to church your whole life. You can hang around with Christian friends. You can talk about Jesus. You can know about him, but not know him. And it is when we have a relationship with him that seals our eternal destination. We will go to heaven to be with him forever. We will have a wonderful, eternal life. But that's not going to happen if I just know about Jesus. I often use an example in my Sunday school class. I have middle school students and I'll say, you guys know, you guys know Taylor Swift? And they'll go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I go, no, you don't. You know about Taylor Swift. And so then I turn it around and talk about that's the same thing with our faith walk. You can know about Jesus or you can know Jesus. And there is a huge difference. And it was on my honeymoon that I realized the difference, thankfully, and that's when I got saved. It's funny you say that. I was just thinking about this today. I just kind of finished up a series called Not a Fan by Kyle Eidelman. And that's exactly what he talks about. How do we as Christians separate being a true friend of Christ and knowing him versus being a fan who simply follows, knows everything about him, but not knowing him truly. And I think it's a really great point to bring up and one that I don't think enough people are talking about. So, yeah, I really love that you brought that up. And I don't remember the specific questions she asked that evening, but. Because I was naked. You're going to put that on the podcast. The main theme I believe we talked about that night was salvation by grace through faith alone, nothing we could earn. That's when it became very real to her. And here I am. I'm thinking, I married a Christian woman. Little did I know that would be such a moment of salvation for her. So she's built upon that ever since. Matter of fact, she has been very deliberate in her faith and is an incredible prayer warrior, woman of God. Is she perfect? Well, in my eyes she is, but we know she's not because she's a human being like we are. But we are made perfect through Christ. So that was an adventure for me to experience that. Most people talk about their honeymoon and the wonderful sights they went to see and stuff. And we talk about watching the Jesus film and coming to faith in the Lord. So that's our honeymoon story. It's really good. The actual honeymoon was really lackluster. We went up to Frankenmuth and we were actually our first. We did our honeymoon in two different sections because Christmas is right in the middle. We got married on the 19th. So we thought we'll go on a mini honeymoon up to Chicago and stuff. Well, the night we got married, Chicago got almost foot of snow, which is bad news going to Chicago when there's that much snow. So we stayed in Merrillville for a night or two and decided we're going to come home, get ready for Christmas. So we were home about three or four days. Christmas Day, we left. We're going to go to the second phase of our honeymoon and go to Frankenmuth. Of course, Frankenmuth is known as the Christmas town, Frankenmuth, Michigan. Well, at that point, most of their Christmas things pretty well shut down. So there wasn't much going on. You could go to Zender's and eat chicken, whoop-dee-doo. But that's where we watched the Jesus movie was our trip to Frankenmuth. And we were going to go skiing over at one of the ski resorts and go to Dearborn, Michigan to see Henry Ford Museum. Well, it got 55 degrees after Christmas and the snow all melted so we couldn't go skiing. And by that time, I said, you want to go to the Henry Ford Museum? I just want to go home. So I don't have the storybook tales of honeymoon. Praise the Lord, we came to know Jesus that weekend. So that was our experience. That's awesome. So that was literally day one of your relationship. That laid the foundation in a way. How would you say that impacted your relationship later on with each other or even your relationship and how you parented your kids, how that turned into running your business together, all of that? In every possible way, it has, I don't know if the right word would be dictated, but it has influenced how we treat each other, how we treat our children, because we don't, either of us, parent exactly like our parents parented us. And I think that our faith had something to do with that. We are active in our community. Our faith directs how we vote, what causes we give our money and our time to. It's been the underwriting factor in every decision of every day of our entire marriage. Right. The big things it influenced on were how it impacted us and how we ran our business, how we ran our marriage, how we raised our children. That was a big factor. We've tried to raise our kids in a godly home where they knew they were loved, they were cared for, they had freedom to be who they were, and yet they had pretty good guidelines in their journey toward understanding their faith, too. It impacted our involvement at church, also with just even the people we hung out with and the friends we developed and the involvement community. All those things were impacted by our walk with the Lord. We hope that what people see in our walk is congruent with what we say. We want our walk to be our talk, too. It hasn't all been positive, though. Ed's been diagnosed with cancer two times. That's no fun. First time, our kids were all in elementary school, and I wondered how I would rear these children by myself. We've had a number of wonderful employees go through our dental office, but we've had a couple extremely challenging seasons or persons that we have needed to really pray our way through, and I think if we didn't have the Lord as our guide, we would have handled those situations poorly. One thing for me personally, and probably for Lori, too, is your Christian faith, your walk, it really is a testimony. People are looking. I don't care what anybody says. People are watching you. Especially if you proclaim to be a Christian, their eyes are on you because they're going to see, is that genuine or is that just fluff? And so that makes it a challenge because you have to constantly be on your guard is the best thing. You have to constantly be in that frame of mind is, I am representing the Lord. That's a big calling. It's one thing to say you're a Christian, but it's another thing to recognize you're representing Christ to the rest of the world. There are a number of songs out there that say, who will be Jesus to them? Or you may be the only Christ anyone will see. And those are very real things. I think one thing we've always tried to do was to be, not to cliche again, but to be the hands and feet of our Lord in the world that he's given us here. Wherever we are planted, whatever, that's where we influence the people around us. Well, bear in mind, too, that this hasn't all been peaches and cream. There have been times when we've messed up and we've had to ask for forgiveness. There are times in our parenting when we made the wrong choice and had to ask one of our kids to forgive us. So being a Christian isn't being perfect. Being a Christian is knowing Jesus, leaning on him for his strength, and then leaning on him, too, when you mess up. And I have told people a number of times, yes, the Christian walk is not easy, but I can't imagine how hard it would be to live this life without the Lord. What I see in a lot of people's eyes is hopelessness. They don't know the Lord. What do they have to hold on to? They can do fleeting things. Some people bury their lives in work or the indulgences of our culture or even just overwhelming indulgence in their kids and stuff, but it's all empty at the end of the day if they don't have a foundation of faith in Christ. Yeah, that makes me think of this analogy. I can't remember exactly where I heard it, but it was all about how teachers would always tell us to be on our best behavior if we were going on a field trip in elementary school or anything like that. They'd always tell us, you're representing our class, you're representing the school, blah, blah, blah, all of the things. Then the person who said it said that, similarly, our time on earth is our field trip. Exactly. The way they connected it, God sent us to represent Him. We are here, and our purpose is to share His light and His love and share the gospel. We're called on not to just be on our best behavior in a way, but to truly represent what it means to be a Christian and to do that in the best way that we can. So yeah, I just thought that was an interesting analogy that it seemed to make a little bit more sense that we are on a field trip, and our field trip is here on earth, and we're here to represent our Savior. Good analogy. I'm learning. I'm sure Lori is too, and you are too, Mary. We're learning that sharing your faith is a dynamic thing. How we share our faith can take many different forms. I just had a conversation with a young man today who's kind of struggling with his faith. I realized, you know, I can't sit here and tell him I've got all the answers. You know, I just tell him, here's what the Lord's done for me. Kind of interesting, there was a Bible teacher back many years ago named Steve Brown. He described having his faith as, I'm just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. I love that. It's like, you know, as believers, we don't have all the answers. I'm not going to be able to answer all your questions, but I can tell you, I'm one beggar. I'm telling you as another beggar, here's where I found bread. It's in the Lord Jesus. Do you remember what else he said? I'm not perfect, but I'm better than I was, as he talked about his walk of faith. Because I think a person who is either outside the Christian faith by choice because they're opposed to it, or by ignorance because they just don't know about it, they think you have to be perfect to be a Christian. And no, no, no, no. So Steve always said, I'm not perfect, but I'm better than I was. And that's the goal of a Christ-like life is just to love him more, listen to him better, serve him as well as you can every day. You know, people say, well, how do you walk as a believer? What do you follow? And I said, well, you know, Scripture gives us a pretty clear description of how we're supposed to conduct ourselves. You know, the Lord says, if you love me, you will obey me. He spells it out pretty clearly in Scripture what he considers obedience. I look at his life. You know, Jesus, you know, only had a three-year ministry for the most part here on this earth. And yet he walked in humility, taught with incredible authority, and ultimately sacrificed his own life on the cross for us. So if we walk in humility and yet use the authority of Scripture to give an answer when asked, you know, I think he's modeled that for us. That's what we're to do. What would Jesus do? That old wrist bracelet, you know, I think that really says, what would Jesus do in this situation? He would be humble. He would be forgiving. Yet he would correct gently. You know, he told the woman, go and sin no more. That's all he said, you know. Very important. Very important. All right. The last question that I have for you guys is, what is your favorite verse in Scripture and why? Matthew, is it 516? Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So do what you can. Love as much as you can. And in so doing, you will direct people's vision to the Lord and not to yourself. They share the gospel in all ways and then, hey, you have to use words. My favorite verse, I've had this for a number of years, is John 14, 6, when Jesus said unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. That to me is the gospel message in one verse. Who is Jesus? He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And salvation in him is the only way to come to the Father. It's only through me. So I share that with a lot of people. You want to understand the gospel? Read John 14, 6 right there. Well, thank you both so much. It was so much fun to get to hear a little bit more of your story. And thank you for allowing me to share that. And again, thank you just so much for the leadership and the influence that both of you have had as I continue to grow my own faith. It's been incredible to get to learn from the both of you. And I know for a fact that anybody who listens to this will learn from all of the words of wisdom that the both of you have to share. So I am just thankful to get to be a very small part of that. So thank you. You're welcome. It has been our honor and pleasure. I've never done one of these before, so this is exciting. Thank you for letting us share in this conversation.