I Want Them to Be Better Than Me

This article was written by Danny Myers and published by Crossroads Professional Coaching.

I’ve been dwelling on a verse from 2 Timothy recently. Paul wrote to Timothy, a young man facing pressure and faith, and he pauses to say something almost offhand:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.
– 2 Timothy 1:5

Three generations. One thread.

Paul doesn’t describe a perfect family. He doesn’t say Lois had it all figured out, or that Eunice never failed her son. He just notes that something genuine got passed from one person to the next, and it took root. 

When I pause and reflect on this passage, I think about my children, and I wonder what I’m passing down.

The Thing I Don’t Say Out Loud

I rarely put my hope for them into words, but it’s this: I want them to be better than me.

I don’t mean smarter, more successful, or more impressive by any external measure. I mean better. I want them to be slower to make excuses and quicker to own their mistakes. I want them to have the character I am still striving to build in myself.

I see my own patterns in them sometimes. The deflecting. The way a hard conversation suddenly becomes about something else. I recognize it because I’ve seen myself do it too many times. When I see it reflected back at me, my first feeling is discouragement. But I’m working to turn that into something more productive and beneficial: responsibility.

They didn’t conjure those patterns out of nowhere. They’re watching and learning from me. 

Transmission Doesn’t Wait

Transmission of character doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It happens whether you are intentional about it or not.

Kids absorb how you respond when things go wrong. They pick up on whether you take accountability or make excuses for yourself. They notice the inconsistencies between what you say and what you do. They don’t tend to learn from what you intended to do, but from what you actually did. They aren’t grading you, but they are subconsciously taking notes.

That is the reality of proximity. 

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
– Deuteronomy 6:6-7

The picture there isn’t a classroom or a scheduled lesson. It’s sitting around the house. Walking somewhere together. Morning. Evening. The regular moments that add up to a childhood. I’m learning that in my life, teaching diligently isn’t about lecturing. It’s about living it out in everyday life.

Imperfect People, Genuine Faith

I find comfort in the fact that we aren’t told Lois and Eunice were flawless. The Bible doesn’t give them halos. We just know Timothy had real faith, and Paul traces it back through them. Imperfect people who kept a genuine faith and passed it on in spite of their flaws.

That matters because I have no plan to pretend to my children that I’ve already arrived. They can already see the gap between who I am on my best days and who I am when I’m tired, defensive, or scared. Performing a version of myself that doesn’t match what they watch daily would be worse than useless. I believe this would teach them that faith is just a mask we wear.

Instead, I can let them see me trying. I can let them see me catch myself and correct course. I can let them see that when I get it wrong, I come back and say so, without a list of reasons why it wasn’t my fault.

That is the kind of attitude and character I want to pass down: repentance, humility, and improvement.

It’s the Same Thing at Work

The same principles play out with a team.

In my experience, people rarely learn what you actually value from a mission statement on the wall. They learn it from what you do when a deadline is missed, when a mistake costs money, when errors are overlooked. Do you own it, or do you go looking for someone else to blame? Do you follow through on what you said you’d do, or does “we’ll get to it” turn into “we never did”?

Whether we’d like to admit it or not, culture isn’t built in a meeting. It’s built in the hundreds of small moments that happen every day. The way you handle a hard conversation, the way you treat someone who can’t do anything for you, the gap between the standard you intend to uphold and the one you actually uphold.

From what I’ve seen, the businesses that build something that lasts aren’t run by the leader with the best-worded values statement. They’re run by someone whose people can see them striving to apply and practice what they believe every day.

Your team doesn’t necessarily need a bonding event or a better speech. They need to watch you live out your faith and values through the good and the bad, especially the bad.

Only God Can Do It

God doesn’t need us to be perfect to work through us. He worked through Lois. He worked through Eunice. He built something in Timothy that endured.

He can redeem what we pass down. He can take our stumbling, still-in-progress faith and use it as the seed of something stronger. 

I believe my children can be better than me, not because I’m going to engineer it, but because I’m going to stay honest, repentant, and trust that what is genuine gets passed on.