I was feeling nervous. 

And silly for feeling nervous, at my age, about starting a new job.

I was going from pastor to custodian, and honestly, I was having trouble with my new title.

As a Pastor I once said, “All work is noble.”  

Now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe it’s noble if someone else is doing it.

And now that it was me doing “it” I wondered how a custodian’s work could be seen as noble.

I was hired to work for an elementary/middle school.  They had just completed their second year of operation, and I was the first custodian to work for the school.

Consequently the school was dirty.  

And dusty. And fruit fly infested. From the floor to as high as a kindergartener could reach, the hallway walls were filthy.  

I cleaned and painted and fixed and organized.  

And moved furniture and hung boards and put together cabinets.

I was so busy my anxieties about being a custodian took a back seat. 

I thought about all those times my mom told me how a person feels better about things when they are busy and working hard.

She was right. For the first eight weeks I had plenty to keep me busy and just wanted to do a good job.  I had little time or energy to ask myself if what I was doing was noble.

But the first day of school arrived, and all the hard preparations had been completed. As I stood in the hallway that first morning, my anxieties began to bubble back up.  

I had been a part of many first school days as a teacher.  This was my first as…well…as a custodian.

Suddenly I noticed a second grader standing in front of me.

“Are you the janitor?” he asked me.

I froze. Janitor? I was having a hard enough time with custodian.  A janitor? 

“Not exactly,” I answered hesitantly. He looked disappointed.

“That’s too bad,” he said.  “I wanted to tell the janitor that the school looks really nice.” 

He walked away.

I was stunned. At that moment whatever title I had didn’t seem so important.

I suddenly remembered when I was eleven, in the fifth grade, walking into school the first day after winter break and smelling the freshly waxed floors.  I loved how shiny and clean the hallways looked.

It made a difference.

As I watched that second grader find his classroom, I realized something I had known all along.

Whether or not our work is “noble” has more to do with attitude than the actual work itself.

In other words, maybe it’s the person that makes the work noble, and not the other way around.  

In that moment I realized my work could either be about floors and walls and bulletin boards, or it could be about the people using the floors and walls and bulletin boards. That’s a subtle difference.  But an important one.  

When I keep in mind the ones who benefit from my work, my work takes on greater meaning.

My work becomes noble.

So, I don’t really care about my title, whether it’s janitor or custodian.  

Although it does say “Facilities” on my parking sign.

Not that that matters.