But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
"But I have trusted in your steadfast love." Read the rest of Psalm 13 before you get to that line and you'll find someone asking God how long he's going to be forgotten, how long he'll wrestle with his thoughts and carry sorrow every day. It's not a psalm that opens calm. It opens close to despair.
What's remarkable is where it ends up — not because the circumstances changed, but because something in the writer shifted toward trust anyway. "My heart shall rejoice" isn't the last word because everything got resolved. It's the last word because he chose to stake his hope on love that had proven steady before, even while the current moment gave him every reason to doubt it.
That's not blind optimism. It's a decision made in the middle of real pain, not after it. If you're somewhere closer to the opening of this psalm than the end of it right now, that's not a disqualifying place to start from — it's exactly where this verse begins too.
If your honest prayer right now would sound more like a complaint than praise, that's still an honest place to start looking for God.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.