leConversation: Becoming Refined Beyond Religion With Founder Valerie Decena
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Editor’s Note
Welcome to The Founder’s Edition, featuring me, Valerie Decena, Founder of LOOKLIVELUXE.
Since launching this interview series, you may have noticed a small change: leConversations has officially become leConversation.
And no, leConversations wasn’t a French grammatical error. It was an intentional choice that followed the signature naming convention I’ve used throughout LOOKLIVELUXE, from leEdit and leNetwork to leCollective and leMarketplace. Still, as the series began to take shape, I realized the name could create unnecessary confusion, especially with the French-inspired styling. So, for the sake of clarity, I simplified it to leConversation.
The name may have changed slightly, but the purpose has not. leConversation remains a space for thoughtful conversations with women about faith, identity, calling, leadership, and the experiences that have shaped both who they are and the work they are called to do.
After spending the first few editions on the other side of the conversation, I thought it was time to answer the same questions I’ve been asking my guests and share more of my own story.
My story has been shaped by several chapters. I began my professional career in healthcare, eventually transitioned into marketing, and have spent more than a decade building experience across image, branding, entrepreneurship, pharmaceutical and medical aesthetics marketing. I’m also a mom to a school-aged boy, and motherhood has changed the way I think about success, stewardship, time, and legacy.
Perhaps the most significant change, however, has taken place in my faith. I grew up Seventh-day Adventist and spent much of my life understanding Christianity through a framework that placed considerable emphasis on religious practice and outward expectations. I genuinely wanted to honor God, but over time, faith became closely connected to performance and perfection for me. I became accustomed to evaluating whether I was doing enough, avoiding the wrong things, or living up to what I believed a faithful Christian should look like.
Eventually, I began studying Scripture for myself in a deeper way, and that process challenged many of the beliefs and assumptions I had carried for years. It ultimately led me away from Seventh-day Adventism and toward a different understanding of the gospel, salvation through Jesus Christ, and what genuine transformation looks like.
That journey has influenced the woman, mother, leader, and entrepreneur I am becoming. It has also influenced what I am building through LOOKLIVELUXE. For this edition of leConversation, I’m stepping into the other side of the conversation and sharing more about the woman behind the vision.
Meet Valerie
I’m Valerie Decena, founder of LOOKLIVELUXE, a faith-informed platform I’m building at the intersection of lifestyle, commerce, media, community, and professional services.
My professional journey began in healthcare as a registered nurse before I transitioned into marketing, gaining experience across pharmaceutical and medical aesthetics marketing, image consulting, and branding. I hold an MBA in Marketing and have spent more than a decade developing my career while pursuing entrepreneurship.
I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2012 with an image and marketing business. Over the years, my work evolved alongside my personal and spiritual growth. I also became a Certified Christian Life Coach in 2024, which deepened my interest in helping women navigate identity, purpose, and personal development through a faith-centered perspective.
That same year I felt convicted to relaunch my business with a greater focus on personal branding and coaching, bringing together my marketing background, entrepreneurial experience, and coaching training. As the vision continued to develop, I realized I wanted to create something that extended beyond individual services. Today, LOOKLIVELUXE is evolving into a platform that brings together editorial storytelling, curated commerce, community, and professional resources.
I’m also a mother to a school-aged boy, and motherhood has influenced how I think about faith, leadership, stewardship, and the legacy I hope to leave.
One of the more personal chapters of my journey has been the return of Valerie & Luxe, my curated jewelry destination. I previously stepped away from selling jewelry because of my religious convictions, but after studying Scripture for myself and reconsidering what I believed about faith and outward appearances, I eventually returned to it with a different perspective. Valerie & Luxe now reflects my appreciation for beauty alongside a more intentional understanding of stewardship.
Read the story: A New Chapter in Curated Jewelry: Introducing Valerie & Luxe
While these experiences have shaped much of who I am today, the most important title I carry is Daughter of God. My relationship with Jesus Christ continues to influence how I approach motherhood, business, leadership, and the life I’m building.
The Conversation: In My Own Words
For this Founder’s Edition, I’m answering the same questions I extend to the women featured in leConversation.
1. What truth about who you are has anchored you most in this season of your calling?
Valerie:
The truth that has anchored me most is understanding that my identity is found in Jesus Christ rather than in my performance, accomplishments, or ability to meet expectations.
For much of my life, I associated being a good Christian with doing the right things and avoiding the wrong ones. I grew up Seventh-day Adventist, and religious observance and outward expectations played a significant role in how I understood faith. I genuinely wanted to honor God, but I also developed an internal pressure to get everything right.
That way of thinking did not remain confined to religion. It influenced how I approached school, work, relationships, business, and even the way I viewed myself. I became very comfortable with striving, and perfection could easily feel like responsibility.
As I began studying Scripture more deeply for myself, I started questioning whether some of what I understood as spiritual maturity was actually rooted in fear, guilt, or the desire to meet expectations. Romans 10:9–10 became especially important to me because it brought me back to the gospel and the foundation of salvation through Jesus Christ. I began to understand more clearly that salvation was not something I could earn through religious performance. That changed the way I viewed my relationship with God and, eventually, the way I viewed myself.
Today, when I think about who I am before I think about what I do, the answer is simple: I am a Daughter of God. I still value excellence and personal growth, but I no longer want achievement or perfection to become the source of my identity.
2. How do you stay aligned with what God has entrusted you to steward?
Valerie:
I regularly have to ask myself whether I am building what God has entrusted to me or simply pursuing what looks successful.
I have always had ideas, and my professional background makes it natural for me to think about brands, opportunities, positioning, growth, and what could come next. Entrepreneurship can make it very easy to believe that every good idea needs to become a business idea or that every opportunity needs to be pursued immediately.
My journey with LOOKLIVELUXE has required me to become more discerning about that. When I began my entrepreneurial journey in 2012, my work centered on image and marketing. When I relaunched in 2024, personal branding and coaching became a larger part of the business. As the vision continued to develop, I realized I was trying to build something broader than a coaching company. I wanted LOOKLIVELUXE to become a destination where women could discover meaningful stories, beautiful products, trusted businesses, professional resources, and genuine community.
Recognizing that larger vision also meant accepting that I could not build every part of it at once. I’ve had to reconsider timelines, change direction when something no longer made sense, and become more comfortable allowing the business to develop in stages.
Motherhood has made that lesson even more personal. I’m a mom to a school-aged boy, and I’m increasingly conscious that my son is learning from what I model, not simply from what I tell him. He sees how I work, how I respond to disappointment, what receives my attention, and how I make room for faith and family while pursuing professional goals.
That has caused me to think more carefully about what stewardship actually means. I don’t believe it is about proving how much I can carry. For me, it is becoming more about faithfully managing what God has placed in my hands while remaining willing to release what does not belong in the current season.
Romans 12:2 has become one of my favorite Scriptures because it speaks about transformation through the renewing of the mind. That has been particularly meaningful because I’ve learned that changing outward behavior is not enough if the thinking underneath it remains the same.
3. What refinement has strengthened your leadership recently?
Valerie:
Learning the difference between perfection and transformation has probably strengthened my leadership more than anything else.
I’ve always valued excellence. My personality, education, corporate career, and entrepreneurial background have all reinforced the importance of preparation and producing quality work. Those are strengths I still value, but I have also had to recognize when excellence crosses into perfectionism.
My religious experience contributed to that as well. When you become accustomed to evaluating yourself against external standards, it is easy to carry that same mentality into other parts of your life. In business, that can look like believing the website needs to be perfect before you launch it, questioning whether you need another credential before you are qualified, or continually revising something because you are concerned about how it will be perceived.
Romans 12:2 has become one of my favorite Scriptures because it speaks about transformation through the renewing of the mind. That has been particularly meaningful because I’ve learned that changing outward behavior is not enough if the thinking underneath it remains the same.
There have been areas where I did not simply need to behave differently; I needed God to change how I understood myself, success, obedience, beauty, and even failure. That process has helped me become more comfortable making decisions without knowing every outcome, allowing ideas to develop over time, and accepting that something can be excellent without being perfect. I still have high standards, but I am learning not to allow those standards to keep me from moving forward.
4. What has shaped the way you lead or serve others through your work?
Valerie:
My own experience of trying to reconcile faith, identity, ambition, and the things I naturally enjoy has shaped much of how I approach my work today.
I have always loved beautiful things. Fashion, jewelry, design, beautiful spaces, branding, and the small details that make an experience feel considered have always interested me. At different points in my life, however, I struggled with whether some of those interests were compatible with being a faithful Christian.
Jewelry became one of the clearest examples. Growing up, my ears were not pierced until I turned 18, so I wore clip-on earrings. When I went away to college, I began wearing jewelry more openly, although I still hid it from my grandmother because I knew how she felt about it.
Later, when jewelry became part of my business, the conflict became more significant. I worried that selling it could cause someone else to stumble spiritually, and eventually I stepped away from that part of the business because I believed doing so was necessary to honor God.
When I began studying Scripture for myself, I had to reconsider the difference between biblical conviction, religious tradition, personal preference, and the condition of the heart. I came to understand that appreciating something beautiful does not automatically make it an idol, just as rejecting something outwardly does not automatically make the heart more righteous.
That lesson extends far beyond jewelry. It has influenced how I think about luxury, ambition, professional success, and the platform I am building. I don’t want LOOKLIVELUXE to communicate that a refined life is defined by what someone wears, owns, earns, or achieves. At the same time, I don’t believe women need to feel guilty for appreciating beauty, developing their gifts, pursuing meaningful careers, or enjoying what God has allowed them to steward.
For me, the more important conversation is about order. Where does our identity come from? What has our heart? Are we stewarding what we have responsibly? Those are the questions I want the work to encourage women to consider.
5. What do you hope women carry with them after encountering your work?
Valerie:
I hope women leave with a stronger understanding of who they are in Christ and with permission to stop measuring their worth by performance.
John 10:10 has become one of the Scriptures that means the most to me. For years, I primarily understood a faithful life through the things I should avoid or give up. As my relationship with Christ deepened, I began to understand abundant life differently.
I don’t believe biblical abundance means accumulating possessions or being promised an easy life. I understand it as the fullness of life that comes from belonging to Christ and living from that foundation. There is freedom in knowing that your identity is secure enough that your possessions, appearance, career, business, relationships, and accomplishments no longer have to tell you who you are.
That understanding has become central to what I want LOOKLIVELUXE to represent. I want women to encounter thoughtful content that strengthens rather than pressures them. I want them to discover businesses and resources that align with their values. I want women in leNetwork to develop genuine relationships with people who will pray for them rather than compete with them. I want the businesses we serve through leCollective to have access to trusted expertise, and I want the future leMarketplace to make discovering Christian-owned and values-aligned businesses easier.
There is room for beauty and refinement in that vision, but neither is meant to become the foundation of a woman’s identity. My hope is that everything we build points back to a more meaningful understanding of what it means to live and steward life well.
6. Is there a part of your story or journey that you feel has deeply shaped the work you do today?
Valerie:
My journey out of religious performance and into a deeper understanding of the gospel has shaped almost everything I am building today.
I grew up within Seventh-day Adventism, and for much of my life, that was the framework through which I understood Christianity. There were aspects of my upbringing that I valued, including discipline, taking faith seriously, and an emphasis on Scripture. At the same time, my personal experience also involved expectations that caused me to associate faithfulness very closely with outward behavior.
At different points in adulthood, I stepped away and later returned. When I returned, I was sincerely trying to do what I believed was right for myself and my family. I made changes in my life and business because I believed they reflected obedience to God. Still, I had questions that did not go away.
Eventually, I began studying Scripture for myself with a willingness to reconsider beliefs I had carried for most of my life. That process was uncomfortable because it meant examining things I had assumed were settled and acknowledging the extent to which fear, guilt, and religious expectations had influenced some of my decisions.
The turning point for me was not simply deciding that I disagreed with a denomination. It was coming to a clearer understanding of the gospel and what Jesus Christ had already accomplished.
Romans 10:9–10 brought me back to the foundation of salvation through faith in Christ. Romans 12:2 challenged me to allow God to renew my mind rather than simply exchange one list of rules for another. John 10:10 helped me understand that the life Jesus offers is not rooted in fear and constant uncertainty about whether I have done enough.
Ultimately, I left Seventh-day Adventism and now identify simply as Christian. I share that carefully because I am speaking about my own experience, not making assumptions about everyone who remains within that denomination. My decision came through studying Scripture and reaching convictions that were different from those I had previously held.
That experience changed the way I approach almost every part of my life. It has affected how I parent, how I make business decisions, how I understand beauty and stewardship, and how I think about the responsibility that comes with influence.
It also made me recognize how easy it is to appear disciplined on the outside while still needing transformation internally. I had spent a significant amount of time trying to make sure I was doing the right things, but God was addressing something deeper: how I understood Him and, as a result, how I understood myself.
That is why Daughter of God is the title that matters most to me. Everything else I do—motherhood, leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, and building LOOKLIVELUXE—comes after that.
What’s Next for LOOKLIVELUXE
LOOKLIVELUXE has evolved significantly from the business I originally started, but when I look back, I can see how the different chapters of my professional and personal life have contributed to what it is becoming.
Today, I am building LOOKLIVELUXE as a master platform that brings together several complementary experiences. leEdit serves as our editorial and media destination, with leConversation creating space for thoughtful conversations about faith, identity, calling, leadership, and the experiences that shape women’s lives and work.
leNetwork is being developed as a private community for women of faith across careers, entrepreneurship, leadership, and ministry. I want it to become a place where relationships are genuine, collaboration is encouraged, and women have access to a network that supports both who they are and what they are building.
leCollective extends the vision into business by connecting brands and entrepreneurs with trusted creative and professional expertise. The future leMarketplace will serve as a curated directory where consumers can discover Christian-owned and values-aligned brands and service providers.
LOOKLIVELUXE itself will continue developing as the platform that connects these experiences, including our long-term vision for curated commerce.
What excites me most is that the vision no longer feels limited to a single service or business model. It gives me room to bring together the areas that have shaped my life and career—faith, marketing, entrepreneurship, beauty, editorial storytelling, community, and service—without forcing them into something they were never meant to be.
I’m also giving myself permission to build it over time. I don’t need every part of the vision to exist today for the vision to be valid. My responsibility is to steward the season I’m in well and continue building with clarity as the next steps become appropriate.
A Moment of Reflection
Looking back, I can see how often I tried to perfect the outside of my life when God was interested in transforming what was happening within me. That pattern showed up in my faith, career, business, and personal expectations.
I still value discipline and excellence, and I believe obedience matters. What has changed is my understanding of where those things belong. They are responses to my relationship with God, not ways of earning an identity or securing His acceptance.
That distinction has brought greater freedom into the way I approach my life. It has also required me to become more honest about perfectionism, fear, comparison, and the pressure I sometimes place on myself to accomplish everything at once.
I am still learning how to balance being a mother, maintaining a professional career, building a business, nurturing relationships, and simply being present in my own life. I do not have a perfectly refined formula for any of it, and I no longer believe that I need one.
What I do know is that I want my son to see a mother whose faith is genuine, not performative. I want the women who encounter my work to understand that refinement is deeper than presentation. I want the businesses and communities I build to reflect integrity rather than simply appearing successful. Most importantly, I want the life I live privately to remain aligned with the faith I communicate publicly.
That is the kind of refinement I am pursuing now.
Refinement Insight
For me, genuine refinement has become less about perfecting outward appearances and more about allowing God to renew the way I think and live. Romans 10:9–10 reminds me that my salvation rests in Jesus Christ rather than my performance. Romans 12:2 reminds me that transformation involves the renewing of the mind, and John 10:10 reminds me of the life Christ came to give.
Those Scriptures have become anchors for the way I understand faith, identity, and the work I am building. They have also helped shape three principles that continue to guide LOOKLIVELUXE: Identity before influence. Calling before comparison. Obedience before visibility.
Continue the Conversation
If there is one thing I hope women take from my story, it is the importance of knowing what they believe for themselves and understanding who they are in Christ apart from performance, titles, accomplishments, or the expectations of others.
My story may not look like yours. You may not have grown up in the same religious environment, built a business, changed careers, or wrestled with the same questions. What I believe many of us share, however, is the temptation to look outside ourselves for evidence that we are doing enough, becoming enough, or living the way we are supposed to.
My journey has taught me to bring those questions back to God and Scripture rather than allowing performance, comparison, or fear to answer them for me.
As I continue building LOOKLIVELUXE, that is the perspective I want to carry forward. I want this platform to be a place where women can pursue meaningful work, appreciate beauty, develop genuine relationships, discover businesses they feel good about supporting, and grow in the understanding that none of those things determine their ultimate identity.
There is still much ahead for LOOKLIVELUXE, and there is still much God is refining in me. I am learning to be comfortable with both.
For now, I am grateful for where the journey has brought me and for the opportunity to finally introduce myself on the other side of leConversation.
I’m Valerie. I’m a mother and a founder, but the most important title I carry is Daughter of God and my identity in Christ is what anchors me in each and every season.
— Valerie Decena
Founder, LOOKLIVELUXE