Kidnapped by her father at 7, Lauren Burns shares story of rescue, redemption

By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Entertainment Editor Sunday, October 04, 2026

Lauren Burns had resigned herself to the possibility that she would never see her mother again.

Three months after her father took her from Texas to Jordan when she was 7 years old, Burns was sitting on a school bus on her way to class when a commotion erupted outside. Then, through the window, she saw a face she knew: her mother.

“All I could see was my mom's face and her beautiful eyes staring at me through the window,” Burns told The Christian Post. “But I froze at that moment because all I could think of, Leah, is that looks just like my mom, but it can't be. My mom's all the way in Dallas. I must be dreaming. This cannot be real.”

Burns’ mother, Cathy Mahone, had traveled overseas with a small team of men, retired soldiers with the U.S. Special Forces, attempting to rescue her daughter. After tracking Burns’ school bus, the team determined that a stop outside the crowded city would provide their best opportunity to get her out safely.

One of the men distracted the driver while another pried open the bus doors. Burns’ mother approached the window and motioned for her daughter to get off the bus, but the little girl couldn’t move.

“I had just thought I'm never going to see her again,” she recalled. “And so at that moment, I froze. I went into shock.”

Her mother eventually climbed onto the bus, picked Burns up and carried her toward the waiting car. When a female chaperone jumped on her mother's back, Burns said her mother punched the woman before the rescue team intervened. Burns was placed beneath blankets in the back of the vehicle as they fled.

“That was a very vivid moment that I remember seeing my mom for the first time,” she said.

Nearly four decades later, Burns, now 46 and a wife and mother living in San Antonio, Texas, is telling the full story of her abduction, rescue and decades-long journey toward healing inStolen: A True Story — Kidnapped, Rescued, Redeemed, released by Post Hill Press with a foreword by Grammy Award-winning country artist Miranda Lambert.

For Burns, the story she wants to tell is not simply about the dramatic circumstances of her kidnapping and rescue. It's about what happened afterward; the anger, fear and "father wounds" she carried into adolescence and the faith that allowed her to forgive her father and rebuild her understanding of God.

Burns' ordeal began over Halloween weekend in 1987. Her parents were divorced, and she expected to spend the weekend with her father, Ali Bayan, stepmother and siblings as she regularly did. Her father asked Burns' mother if she could stay an extra night to go trick-or-treating and told her he would take Burns to school Monday.

Burns was wearing her cheerleading Halloween costume when her father picked her up. But instead of heading to his neighborhood, he told her they were going to the airport.

“He turned and looked at me and told me, ‘We are actually going to the airport. I have a big surprise for you. I'm taking you to Jordan so you can see where I grew up and meet the rest of your family and my side of the family,’” Burns recalled.

She immediately began asking where her siblings and stepmother were, whether they were coming and whether her mother knew about the trip.

Jordan was Burns’ first experience outside the United States. She did not speak Arabic and suddenly found herself immersed in an unfamiliar culture and separated from her mother and stepmother. Her father initially told her they were on vacation, but Burns grew suspicious as his behavior toward her changed.

When he told her she would begin attending school and refused to allow her to speak with her mother, she realized she wasn't on vacation. His treatment of her changed, too; back in Texas, her father had been kind and loving, but in Jordan, he suddenly became cold and distant.

“That's when the fear really began, the confusion, the thought of ‘I'm never going to see my mom or go home again. This is my new reality,’” she said.

“Your dad is the person that's supposed to protect you, and love you, and not lie to you,” she continued. “That was the first time that my father was really shattering my childhood, and that innocence that I had, you know, at seven was slowly breaking.”

Burns was gone for approximately three months before the rescue brought her home to the United States. However, physical freedom did not immediately heal the internal wounds Burns carried.

She had identified as a Christian since childhood and believed God had played a role in bringing her home. But as she entered adolescence, Burns began wrestling with a different question: If God was good, why had He allowed her kidnapping to happen in the first place?

“I wasn't mad at God. I'm like, God, if you're good, not if you're real, but if you're good, why did you ever let this even happen to me?” Burns recalled. “Why me? Why did my childhood have to be such a broken mess?”

A significant turning point came through the Lambert family, longtime friends who had known Burns since childhood. Country star Miranda Lambert's parents, Beverly and Rick Lambert, had supported Burns' mother throughout the three months she was missing and were among the first people Burns saw when she returned to Texas.

As a teenager, Burns spent a summer with the Lamberts and later lived with the family for about a year. She shared a room with Miranda Lambert and became immersed in the family's church community. Her healing finally began in a small group with other teenagers when she admitted the jealousy and pain she carried over what she perceived as their “intact” families.

“I just had these deep wounds, and that's where my healing began,” she said. “When I could finally label it and say it and bring it out, and then had people to love on me.”

Burns eventually decided she wanted to see her father again; when she was about 13 and her family believed it was safe, Burns reestablished contact with him. She continued seeing him periodically during high school as she attempted to confront him and find answers to questions she had carried since childhood, and her father even attended her high school graduation.

Afterward, Burns said, her mother did something that shaped her understanding of forgiveness: She invited the man who had taken her daughter overseas into her home and cooked a meal for him and his family.

“My mom was showing me through her actions what forgiveness looks like,” Burns said, adding that her mother had sacrificed significantly to brin gher home, selling her jewelry to pay rent before eventually moving with Burns to Florida to live with Burns' grandmother.

“For her to invite him into our home, that's showing me forgiveness,” Burns said. “As a mother, it's so powerful.”

“I see things very differently. I see things as a mom, as a wife,” she said, adding that she now considers what her stepmother and others experienced during the ordeal. “There's so many people that was touched by this and affected and impacted, other than just myself and my mom.”

Her mother’s grace eventually inspired Burns herself to forgive her father: “I had to walk through forgiving him for what he did, so I can begin to heal,” she said. “Because me holding on to the anger and the resentment that I had towards him for so long, if I still held on to that unforgiveness, I don't believe that I could stand and speak and tell about how amazing our heavenly Father is, and still have all that anger towards my earthly father.”

The idea for Stolen came unexpectedly about three years ago while she was reading a cookbook by Miranda Lambert. The recipes brought back memories of growing up around the Lambert family, including Beverly Lambert's meatloaf, and Burns found herself crying.

She said she felt God impressing upon her that it was time to tell not only the story of the kidnapping and rescue but also what came afterward.

“I just felt like God in my spirit was saying, Lauren, it is time for you to share your story of everything that happened, not just the kidnapping and the rescue, but of what I did to bring you home, and the healing and the wounds that you walked through and that you overcame all these years later,” she said.

Burns initially questioned how she could write a book while working as a physical therapist, raising children and living with dyslexia. She began praying for the people and resources she would need. The process eventually led her to reconnect with the men involved in her rescue for the first time since she was a child and thank them for risking their lives to bring her home.

Burns also launched the "Redeemed" podcast while writing the book, which focuses on sharing others' testimonies of restoration.

Now, looking back over her life, Burns said she sees redemption in the life she has today. While she moved 14 times before reaching high school, her two sons have grown up in the same home. After years of struggling with Father's Day, she found a father figure in Rick Lambert and later gained a stepfather who, she said, loved her as his own. Eventually, she married and started a family herself.

“All of those pieces of my story are the redemption story,” Burns said.

Now, Burns said she hopes her experience demonstrates that trauma does not have to determine the rest of a person's life, and God can heal even the deepest of wounds.

“God can restore anything,” she said. “It doesn't matter what you've gone through, if you've had an abortion, if you've gone through a divorce, if you've gone through something horrific like a kidnapping, God can take the broken pieces of your life and He can redeem and restore in a mighty way, and then He can use your story literally for His glory.”

 Stolen: A True Story — Kidnapped, Rescued, Redeemedis now available.