I grew up on well water. I remember standing with my dad while the drilling manager was on property, discussing depth. The consultant had a recommendation. It was a reasonable depth, sufficient for most needs, and cost-effective. My dad listened politely and then said something I have never forgotten.

Let’s go a little deeper. I am not going for the minimum on something this important. I only want to do this once and I need to plan for droughts, and for the day when others are tapping into the same groundwater.

That was my dad. He was not a man who did the minimum on things that mattered.

I did not fully understand what he meant then. I do now.

The Lesson Nobody Teaches About Wells

If you grew up turning on a faucet and water appeared, you may not have thought much about what is actually happening beneath the surface. Water does not simply exist at the ready. It has to be reached. And how deep you drill determines almost everything about the quality, the reliability, and the longevity of what you access.

Shallow wells are easier. They cost less to dig. They get you water faster. But they are also more vulnerable to contamination, to seasonal drought, to the cumulative effect of neighbors drawing from the same underground source. When conditions are good, a shallow well works fine. When conditions change, and conditions always change, a shallow well is the first to run dry.

Deep wells are another matter. They require more investment, more time, more planning. The drilling is harder. The equipment matters. There are real limits to how fast you can go and how far. But deep wells access water from layers that shallow wells cannot reach … cleaner, more stable, more resilient. When the drought comes, the deep well keeps giving.

My dad understood something that took me years to apply beyond the literal: the depth of your well is a decision you make before you need it. By the time you are thirsty, it is too late to drill deeper.

This Not Really About Wells

You already know where this is going.

We each have multiple wells in our lives:  the internal and relational resources we draw from daily. Some are dug deep. Some are barely scratched into the surface. And the depth of each one determines whether it holds up when life gets hard.

Consider these:

Relationships. Some of your relationships are deep wells. They are built over years of honesty, shared history, mutual investment, and the kind of trust that does not evaporate under pressure. When a crisis comes, you know exactly who you are calling. You have been drawing from that well for years and it has never run dry.

Other relationships are shallow. Pleasant in good conditions. But when drought arrives and when you actually need something from them and you reach down and find very little. Not because the person is bad. Because the well was never dug deep enough to reach anything that lasts.

Conviction and ethics. A person whose values were never tested, examined, or genuinely chosen, perhaps only inherited or adopted by proximity, is drawing from a shallow well. When the pressure comes, when the cost of the conviction becomes real, the shallow well runs dry. It cannot sustain what it was never built to hold.

The person who has done the harder work, who has examined what they actually believe and why, who has held their values under scrutiny and chosen them anyway, that person has a deep well. It holds under pressure. It holds in drought. It holds when others around them are tapping the same source and coming up empty.

Perseverance. This one is built, not given. Every time you stayed with something difficult when it would have been easier to leave, and every time you chose the longer view over the immediate relief, you were drilling deeper. The well of perseverance is dug one hard season at a time. Which is why people who have never been through anything difficult are often undone by the first real test. The well was never dug. Think shallow versus deep well. 

The Honesty Inventory

Here is what I know from fifteen years of sitting with people in their most honest moments: most of us have at least one well we have been treating as deeper than it actually is.

A relationship that feels solid because it has never been tested. A conviction that feels firm because it has never cost anything. A sense of resilience built entirely on favorable conditions.

These are not character flaws. They are simply wells that have not been dug to the depth the future is going to require.

The question worth sitting with, the one my dad was asking without knowing it, is not whether your wells are working today. It is whether they will hold when the drought comes. Because it will come. Droughts always do.

And by the time you are thirsty, it is too late to start drilling.

Going Deeper

Digging a deeper well is not dramatic. It rarely announces itself. It looks like the hard conversation you have instead of the comfortable silence. The relationship you invest in before you need it. The belief you examine instead of simply inherit. The difficult season you stay with instead of exit. Showing up for yourself and others when it is easier to withdraw.

It looks like my dad standing in a field, thinking about a future drought before the first dry day had arrived, and saying. Let’s not do the minimum. Let’s go deeper. Knowing that the additional costs and effort today, pay off in the future. Albeit, possibly silently or even unknowingly.

I can still hear his voice when I ask myself whether I am building for good conditions or for all conditions. Whether I am drawing from something real or something that only works when everything else is working too.

How deep are your wells?

Not all of them need to be bottomless. But the ones that matter, the ones your life actually depends on, deserve more than the minimum.

Go a little deeper. You will only want to do this once.