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.