In my days of wine and roses, sour wine and withered roses, when I was stashing vodka bottles in the bathroom, the glove compartment, and the geranium pot, I saw my life as a complete waste. …It was a long winter of discontent, guilt, fear, shame, and unbearable hypocrisy. The future held out only the bleak prospect of a wet brain and an alcoholic shuffle, commitment to a funny farm, or premature death. The disease meant failure with no redeeming aspect whatsoever.

But living out of the center has taught me that every failure succeeds in some way. It provides the opportunity not only to humble the self, but also to be with the failure of others. If your life or mine were an untarnished success story, an unbroken upward spiral toward holiness, we might never come to understand the human heart.”

-Brennan Manning