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Jimmy and Joan are dedicated to daughter Jenifer. “Anytime people share hardships, it brings them closer. When times are easy, they're easy. When they're horrid, you pull together or everything collapses.”

DEDICATION

• Jimmy Barrentine, 60, executive director, Baptist Convention of Iowa, and Joan Barrentine, 57, former nurse, live in Urbandale, have been married 39 years and have two children.

This year, Jimmy and Joan Barrentine will celebrate Valentine's Day with their daughter, Jenifer, for the second year in a row.

Jenifer is 29 and a college graduate, but she lives with her parents. In February 2004, she was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an illness with no cure.

Two years ago, her slurred speech deteriorated into an inability to talk. She communicates through a computer and uses a wheelchair.

Systematic lupus (an auto-immune disease affecting her neurological system) and fibromyalgia (a chronic illness that attacks joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments, causing pain and inflammation) have attacked her body.

Joan once worked part time as a nurse. Now, she stays with Jenifer full time.

Last year on Valentine's Day, their daughter offered to make a reservation and pay for her parents to go out to dinner.

"She's always sent us out on a date when she was healthy," Jimmy said. "But that's not what we are now. We're the three of us."

So this year, the three will dine together at Sam & Gabe's in Urbandale.

When Jimmy bought flowers for his wife last year on Valentine's Day, he purchased a second bouquet for his daughter, and got the sort of disapproving looks from other customers that ministers don't usually receive.

Losing that annual romantic dinner together. No longer taking work vacations together. Less one-on-one time.

Jimmy and Joan say those changes have made their marriage stronger.

"Anytime people share hardships, it brings them closer," Joan said. "When times are easy, they're easy. When they're horrid, you pull together or everything collapses."

Not that it's been a perfect transition from empty nest to living with their grown daughter. Jimmy still wants to say "no" to her.

"She's our daughter, but she's an adult," he said. "So we had to transition from being her parents and caretakers to being her friends, because if we reduced her to being a child again, that might be worse than the illness."

And part of growing is learning lessons from the woman who was once their little girl.

Jimmy talks about his daughter's sense of humor: One physician told Jenifer her diagnosis wouldn't be certain until an autopsy was performed following death.

"And Jenifer said, 'How do you plan to get the word to me?' " Jimmy said.

He talks about her courage: The time Jenifer had a seizure so violent that the spasms shook her out of her wheelchair onto the ground.

"As soon as Jenifer could move anything, she did this," Jimmy said.

He gives a thumbs-up sign.

"I don't mean to diminish the romantic side of marriage," he said. "If we don't nourish each other, especially young couples, they need to remind each other of the passion in their hearts and have date nights and candlelit dinners.

"As we get older, these things are still important, but those aren't the most important things.

"The day doesn't have to be easy for us to come together."

Reporter Erin Crawford can be reached at (515) 284-8438 or ecrawford@dmreg.com