How do I preserve WP content formatting while integrating into my existing site?

Hello!

I am integrating WordPress into my professional portfolio. So, I have created a home.php page for my blog that uses the same styling as the rest of my portfolio. I am in the process of styling, and I have created many dummy blog posts with paragraphs of lorem ipsum text. Unfortunately, I noticed that the line breaks between these paragraphs do not appear in my web page.

My question: how do I guarantee that my posts’ formatting appears on my blog as it was originally input in WordPress? (Particularly for line breaks. I will also be looking to add SlideShares in the future too.)

Below is “The Loop” for my blog posts on my home.php page.

<?php 

// for each post,
while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();

	// get everything
	$id = get_the_ID();
	$title = get_the_title();
	$time = get_the_time('F jS, Y');
	$content = get_the_content();

	// post title
	echo '<a id="post-' . $id . '" class="postTitle" style="font-size: 300%;" href="https://blog.myportfolio.com/#post-' . $id . '">' . $title . '</a>';

	// post subtitle
	echo '<p class="subtitle">' . $time . " by Nathan Wireds</p>";

	// problem: content format changes from when it's input into wordpress.
	// for example, there are no paragraph spaces! it's just a wall of text
	echo '<p>' . $content . '</p>';		

	// comments pop-up. change it to be on the page? ajax? how?
	echo '<p>';
	echo comments_popup_link('No Comments ?', '1 Comment ?', '% Comments ?');
	echo '</p>';

	echo "<hr/>";
endwhile;		

?>