Breaking the Cycle?

My dad killed his girlfriend in front of me when I was 16.  Nineteen years later, shortly after his death, it started dawning on me that he probably killed my mom too.
Boyfriends kill their girlfriends. Husbands kill their wives. It happens every day.  I would insert some statistics in here, but I got stuck on this one:

A child's exposure to the father abusing the mother is the strongest risk factor for transmitting violent behavior from one generation to the next.  -American Psychological Association, Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996

I spanked my children when they were younger. I had broken the cycle of abuse with baseball bats, rope, hammers to the skull, and death threats. It's taken me years to learn what cycles I was riding, much less how to break them. Obviously, I wasn't going to kill anyone in front of them, but I was eight years into parenting before I decided it could be done without physical punishment, 15 years in before I started seriously letting go of the idea that I knew what was best for them. Parents have a hard time letting go in general. In previous generations, beating a child was the best way to keep them from foolishly straying from the Lord. Was it not that way in your family? Oh, ok, maybe it's just me.

I realized years ago, that my children will love me, no matter what.  They will want my love. They want it so badly that they find ways to be loving to me, to make me feel special and seen. Now, it's widely accepted that children are out for themselves, but, even if they are loving toward me because of love they want returned I am free to love them in return. In this world, there are people who will love me. I don't have to chase them. I'm free to trust them and just focus on being loving.  Don't praise me too quickly. This is just my mindset. It's an improvement. I still fail miserably as a dad.

The only reason I'm doing this, digging into the darkness of my past, is for love.  Love is hard. To love at a distinguishable level requires giving more than we get. So, to love is to feel less loved in return. If you're in it for yourself, you can't love.  I think we all want to be loved, and we know it when we feel it. We all know the desire to be loved, but we also all know what it feels like when someone is kind and loving toward us. To me, it feels suspect, but I'm trying to adjust.

If watching a child watching his father beat his mother is the strongest risk factor for transmitting violent behavior from one generation to the next, what is the strongest factor for transmitting love and kindness? Do we even know? Ironically, my intention with this blog post was to focus on love and a positive approach to life. It's hard for me to do that, especially in a blog devoted to the abuse I suffered as a child.

Oh, now I remember what prompted all this. People want me to tell my stories.  I suppose I want to tell them too, but I don't want to simply dump my dirty laundry on the world for entertainment purposes.  I want to pull some meaning out of my experience. I want to have something meaningful to offer.  It's not enough for me that I don't beat my children and kill women. That I don't is certainly a breaking of the cycle, but it's not enough for me. Love that doesn't go beyond what's fair is not the kind of love I was raised to appreciate. Jesus preached love for enemies, a transformative love. My dad certainly pulled the moral landscape down a few notches with his behavior. I was there watching it, and I feel some obligation to make up for my inaction. I feel an obligation to advance love. I don't know exactly how to do it, but I'm here, trying to figure it out. Thanks for reading.