Author and Bible teacher Jane Johnson founded Dig Your Well® in 2022 after starting a blog in 2013, eight months after her best friend died from stage four colon cancer and seven years into what would be a decade-long wait for a family.
Throughout those excruciating ten years, Jane dug her well and began teaching women the things she dug up in God's Word in person at conferences throughout the country and with her online community.
Today, Jane teaches women worldwide how to do the same: digging deep into God's Word and studying it for themselves, transforming their quiet times forever. Jane continues her Biblical teaching from her home in Bend, Oregon, alongside her husband, Josh, and their three miracle babes.
the story behind Dig Your Well
I stood in Shawna’s kitchen, looking at photographs on the refrigerator as she expertly pulled shots from the espresso machine in the corner. The motor hummed and the caramel-colored liquid trickled out. She poured it into a cup of ice before topping it off with a swirl of canned whipped cream and a quick finish of sprinkled cinnamon.
Handing the glass to me and keeping one for herself, she led me into the living room and we took our perch on the well-worn, deep purple couch. Kaleb was stirring in his crib upstairs, not yet asleep. And Shawna began asking the kind of questions you ask someone in the throes of a brand-new discipleship-based friendship.
Where are you from?
Do you have any siblings?
What is your major?
Tell me your life story.
This happened once a week—this sharing of learned life lessons. Week by week, we sat there swallowed up in her couch, reading different parts of the Bible alongside commentaries for explanation and insight and application. Shawna knew well that she didn’t have to be a Bible teacher in order to disciple-teach.
Natural conversation followed. The simplest ones that always lead to the deeper ones. The ones that have grit and meaning.
The ones that stick to your bones.
“Dig your well,” Shawna said one day. I had been lamenting my struggle through singleness when the pastor’s wife [who would later become my best friend] taught me her most important life lesson. It was a reference from Psalm 84:6 and the people who pilgrim-pass through the Valley of Baca and make it a spring—or, as it can also be translated, a well. The pilgrims traveling through drew water from that spring-well before continuing on their way.
“Dig your well for yourself,” she said, “and also for the people who follow along after you. And do it now, while you are single and can dig a little bit deeper and linger a little bit longer.” She had a point. I really had nothing else to do but pass the hours drinking coffee, studying for exams, working my part-time job, and dreaming of how the rest of my life would shape up.
Shawna had been digging her own well for years with regular quiet times, letting God fill it with the water of His Word. And on those afternoons, I sipped her handmade iced coffee and drank from her dug-out-well wisdom.
Of all the things she taught me, that was what stuck. To dig down—and dig deep. Every day, coming to God’s presence whether or not I wanted to, whether or not I had the time or the inclination. In the good days and the ones full of tears. Dig in and dig down and dig deep into His Word. So that when life got busy, and there was marriage and a mortgage and little ones at my morning-feet, I could draw from my dug-out-daily well.
And when I walked through the desert, I could drink from it.
excerpt, Mercy Like Morning
It is the most amazing feeling when you can actually feel the active, working prayers being prayed on your behalf. There was a stretch between the middle of the night on Friday and the first half of Saturday that I thought the puke-apocalypse had for sure caught up with me, but it never really take a hold. I am 100% attributing it to this community who rallied when asked! Today is the first day in ten of normalcy, everyone is back at school, the house is deep-cleaned, and I’m pushing up my sleeves because I have a deadline to meet! Thank you so much for praying!!
When we lived on Maui, there was a hurricane that made its way toward us. We prepared as best we could, pulled the furniture inside, stocked up on food, checked off the things on the “a hurricane is coming” list. And then, just before it was supposed to hit, it stopped moving. The storm just sat there offshore, churning.
Last Thursday night, some demonic form of the stomach flu hit our house at 1:00 in the morning. And it’s just sat here, churning, ever since. Today, nearly seven full days later, it’s made its way through all three kids and we have two still flat on the couch with dueling fevers, the pukes still coming.
It’s my tell that I’m 25 days away from my manuscript deadline, the very first of what, God-willing, will be a full study-commentary series through every single book of the Bible. It’s a HUGE undertaking, a giant, God-sized dream, and I’ve lost a week of work on it snuggling these sick babes back to health.
All that to say, I would LOVE your prayer! For this sickness to lift and for it to bypass me altogether (and not drag this nonsense out any longer). And for an unheard-of level of productivity to finish the last push of the manuscript, re-read it all the way through, and edit out the approximate 10,000 extra words that will bring it all back inside of the 60,000-word goal. 🙏🏽💪🏽
Thanks so much for being part of this wild story, and cheering me on for so many years! It means everything absolutely everything. 🥰
Always look for the fruit. And, if you can’t see it, ask God to show it to you. He will, I promise.
He always does.
You and I both know that the road isn’t always long. But sometimes, a mile can feel like ten.
To the bone-tired one: Come, sit at the well.
