Lauren Burns had already been taken from one home by the time she moved into a run-down farmhouse in Lindale, Texas, the house Miranda Lambert sings about in “The House That Built Me.”
She shared a bedroom there with Miranda for two years, and she has been honest about how she felt.
“Even though I love them with all my heart, and Miranda’s like a little sister to me, I was still mad about another move, another change, and having to go from the city to the country,” she has said.
Lauren told the whole story in an extensive interview with People, and it fills her memoir, Stolen, which Woman’s World reports carries a foreword by Miranda.
Rick and Bev Lambert Moved Into Her Mother’s Townhouse to Bring Lauren Burns Home
On Halloween weekend in 1987, Lauren’s father took the 7-year-old from her Texas home to his native Jordan. She has said that no little girl would ever think her father would do anything to harm her.
Her mother, Cathy, called Rick Lambert right away. Rick was a former Dallas police officer, and he and his wife, Bev, were close family friends who ran a private investigation company called Lambert and Lambert.
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The U.S. government could not help, because it had no extradition agreement with Jordan. Rick and Bev moved into Cathy’s townhouse with their daughter, Miranda, to help plan Lauren’s return, and they were with Cathy day and night, calling all their connections and reaching out to people they did not even know.
Cathy spent $80,000 to send a four-man team of retired special-operations members from a North Carolina security firm to Jordan. The group crossed the Allenby Bridge into Israel minutes before Jordanian authorities tracked them down.
After the rescue, Lauren and her mother changed their last name, lived in hiding and moved 14 times by the time she reached high school.
“Rick Lambert was the dad I needed before my stepdad came into my life,” she told People.
Lauren Burns Found a Second Family in the Farmhouse Behind ‘The House That Built Me’
The Lamberts had been through hard times of their own. Rick told KLTV the family was basically homeless when they moved to the Lindale area, and Miranda told Good Morning America two of the windows were boarded up and they never did get central heat.
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Their door stayed open anyway. On Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast, Miranda said her parents had a calling to lift up women going through a rough time, and women and children escaping domestic violence often sat around the family’s kitchen table.
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Bev took Lauren to church and introduced her to all the kids, and she has called Lauren just like a third sibling.
“There’s no train I wouldn’t get in or under for Lauren,” Bev has said.
Lauren has called Miranda a little sister with the biggest heart, just like her parents. Miranda described her in a statement quoted by People.
“One of the bravest people I know… I’ve watched her walk through pain and come out stronger, using her voice to help others find hope.”
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Plenty of fans who have sung along to “The House That Built Me” never knew a second girl once called that bedroom home.
Lauren Burns now lives in San Antonio, where she works as a physical therapist and has a husband and children of her own. Her story is in Stolen, and the foreword belongs to the little girl who shared her bedroom in Lindale.
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